■ 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON 
PLAYWRITING 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON 
PLAYWRITING 


BY 

AGNES  PLATT 


NEW  YORK 

DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 

1920 


Copyright.  1920, 

bt  dodd,  mead  and  company,  Ino. 


FOREWORD 

It  is  easy  to  say  **Do  this*'  and  ''Don't  do 
that.''  Indeed,  I  could  have  reiterated  both  at 
such  length  that  I  might  have  written  a  book 
quite  as  long  as  this  on  any  one  of  the  points 
that  I  have  tried  to  take  up  here  chapter  by 
chapter. 

I  do  most  fervently  believe  that  the  dry  bones 
of  stage  technique  can  be  taught — in  fact,  all  my 
personal  experience  goes  to  prove  this.  I  have 
been  handling  plays  now  for  more  years  than 
I  care  to  remember,  and  have  found  in  case  after 
case  that  a  little  technical  adjustment  will  turn 
an  unmarketable  play  into  a  commercial  propo- 
sition. 

Yet  when  all  is  said  and  done,  I  am  no  be- 
liever in  hard  and  fast  rules.  The  one  point 
always  to  bear  in  mind  is  that  any  rule,  how- 
ever necessary,  can  be  modified  to  suit  each  in- 
dividual case.  Above  all,  times  change.  What 
is  desired  one  year  will  be  met  with  indifference 
the  next.  The  great  precept  which  no  dram- 
atist can  afford  to  overlook  is,  that  he  must 
study  the  needs  of  his  time. 

Agnes  Platt. 

24,  Old  Burlington  Street,  W.  1. 


r>2r3{>6S 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Foreword      .     .     •.    •     .     .     .     .    v    v    .-.    v    .      v 


CHAPTER  I 

What   the  Public   Want;   What   the  Managers 
Want  ;  What  the  Practical  Actor  Wants  .     .      1 


CHAPTER  II 

Things  that  Are  Essential  in  a  Good  Play,  and 
Those  that  a  Successful  Playwright  Must 
Avoid 12 


CHAPTER  III 

How  TO  Choose  a  Plot;  How  to  Decide  upon  Its 
Treatment;  How  to  Build  Up  a  Scenario  ...     24 


CHAPTER  IV 
How  to  Select  and  Differentiate  the  Characters    38 

CHAPTER  V 

The  Art  of  Writing  Characteristic  and  Telling 
Lines 50 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  VI 


Preparation;  Motives  and  Plausibility;  Entrances 
AND  Exits 63 


CHAPTER  VII 
HusrouR 75 

CHAPTER  VIII 
Situations,  Curtains,  Atmosphere,  and  Detail  .     .     84 

CHAPTER  IX 
Practicability  and  Expense 97 

CHAPTER  X 

How  to  Sell  a  Play  When  Finished,  with  Hints 
on  Terms  and  Agreements 110 

CHAPTER  XI 
Casting  and  Production >     .     .     •  123 

CHAPTER  XII 
Stage  Terms v    >     .     .  135 

Glossary 141 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON 
PLAYWRITING 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON 
PLAYWRITING 

CHAPTER  I 

WHAT    THE    PUBLIC    WANT;    WHAT    THE    MANAGEES 
want;   what  THE  PRACTICAL.  ACTOR  WANTS 

*  *  I  know  what  I  like !  *  *  We  are  all  familiar 
with  this  phrase,  which  is  one  that  is  constantly 
on  the  lips  of  the  theatre-going  public,  and  one 
of  which  it  is  well  that  every  would-be  dramatist 
should  take  heed. 

The  public  does  know  what  it  likes;  and  it 
will  not  be  coerced  into  thinking  otherwise.  I 
have  often  heard  the  conscientious  objector  ad- 
mit that  a  play  which  he  has  been  told  to  ad- 
mire is  good,  but — he  does  not  go  a  second  time 
to  see  it !  The  reason  why  he  likes  a  certain  play 
he  may  find  hard  to  tell,  but  he  is  generally 
quite  clear  about  his  likes  and  dislikes. 

Since  it  is  evident  that  the  whole  financial 

side  of  the  theatre  depends  upon  the  knack  of 

pleasing  the  public,  a  playwright  who  wishes 

to  be  successful  must  study  the  art  of  pleasing. 

1 


2     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

To  do  this  he  must  study  the  psychology  of 
crowds,  and  he  must  visit  the  theatre  again  and 
again  to  watch,  not  the  play  only,  but  its  effect 
upon  the  audience.  He  will  soon  realise  that 
audiences  differ.  A  line  that  provokes  a  roar 
of  laughter  one  night  will  fall  comparatively 
flat  the  next;  but  with  a  little  care  he  will  be 
able  to  look  out  for  certain  qualities  which  al- 
ways tell,  and  if  he  reasons  from  what  he  ob- 
serves, will  learn  in  time  to  differentiate  be- 
tween the  successful  effects  which  are  due  to 
the  writing  of  the  play,  and  those  which  are 
due  entirely  to  the  acting  or  production.  He 
will  see  that  some  lines,  which  are  really  very 
witty  in  themselves,  miss  their  effect  upon  the 
stage  because  they  give  but  little  chance  to  the 
actor.  They  may  appeal  to  the  mind  but  they 
do  not  appeal  to  the  eye;  whereas  many  an- 
other line,  which  is  in  itself  infinitely  less  witty, 
will  go  with  telling  effect  when  spoken  on  the 
stage,  because  it  gives  the  speaker  a  chance  for 
facial  play  or  gesture. 

What  the  public  wants  when  it  goes  to  see  a 
play  is  primarily  the  appeal  to  the  eye.  The 
stage  speaks  to  the  brain  through  the  eye,  and 
what  we  see  is  of  paramount  importance.  A 
very  slight  study  of  audiences  will  make  this 
perfectly  apparent,  but  we  shall  soon  begin  to 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWEITING     3 

notice  that  effects  divide  themselves  broadly 
into  two  types — the  sort  of  thing  which  we  have 
always  liked  and  always  shall  like,  because  it  is 
based  elementally  upon  human  nature ;  and  the 
type  of  effect  which  appeals  by  reason  of  its 
novelty.  The  successful  play  is  really  a  com- 
bination of  these  two  qualities.  It  must  have 
its  roots  in  our  common  human  nature,  but  it 
must  be  set  forth  in  an  original  way. 

Fashions  change:  there  are  fashions  in  play- 
writing  as  in  everything  else.  The  mode  of 
yesterday  is  never  the  mode  of  to-day.  It  is 
only  by  studying  audiences,  and  watching  with 
care  and  intelligence  their  way  of  taking  all  the 
points  in  plays  both  new  and  old,  that  we  learn 
to  gauge  the  feeling  of  the  moment.  Unless  we 
keep  our  finger  on  the  public  pulse  we  can  never 
succeed,  and  all  books  upon  playwriting  are 
apt  to  fail  if  they  lay  down  hard  and  fast  rules 
and  make  no  allowances  for  time  and  change. 
Everything  I  say  in  this  book  I  say  with  diffi- 
dence. My  desire  is  not  to  lay  down  the  law 
but  to  awaken  thought ;  to  make  some  faint  sug- 
gestions which  will  give  birth  to  a  train  of  re- 
flection individual  to  the  thinker,  and  so  enable 
him  to  develop  on  his  own  lines.  No  hard  and 
fast  rules  can  be  anything  but  hampering ;  how- 
ever well  versed  one  may  be  in  the  theory  of 


4     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

playwriting,  constant  visits  to  the  theatre  will 
keep  one  in  mind  of  the  fact  that  the  ultimate 
judge  is  always  the  public,  and  that  unless  we 
study  the  public  it  is  useless  to  study  the  art. 

Go  to  the  same  play  half  a  dozen  times. 
The  first  time  you  will  go  to  see  the  play,  and 
you  will  learn  much,  but  your  later  visits  will 
teach  you  more,  as  you  will  then  go  to  see  the 
effect  of  the  play  on  the  audience.  Watch 
closely,  and  when  you  hear  the  house  rock  with 
laughter  or  ringing  with  applause,  say  to  your- 
self— ^  *  Why  ? ' '  Sometimes  the  question  will  be 
easy  to  answer;  catchy  sentiment  or  a  really 
funny  line  may  explain  it.  At  other  times,  al- 
though you  will  find  yourself  laughing  or  ap- 
plauding heartily  with  the  audience,  you  will 
not  be  quite  so  sure  to  what  your  emotion  is 
due.  In  the  end  you  will  probably  decide  that 
it  is  due  to  an  ensemble.  The  line  is,  in  itself, 
crisp  and  good ;  it  has  lent  itself  to  a  telling  de- 
livery aided  by  facial  expression,  or  possibly 
some  significant  bit  of  business ;  and  further  re- 
flection yet  will  show  you  that  the  producer  of 
the  play  has  put  the  actor  who  has  to  speak 
that  line  in  the  most  effective  position  for  its 
delivery. 

Ensemble!  I  am  afraid  I  shall  use  this  word 
again  and  again,  for  it  is  a  vital  one  where  the 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING      5 

stage  is  concerned.  It  leads  us  at  once  to  the 
second  heading  of  our  chapter,  ^^What  the  Man- 
ager Wants.''  A  successful  stage  production 
is  always  a  question  of  ensemble.  However 
good  the  play,  it  will  miss  its  effect  on  the  stage 
unless  it  lends  itself  to  acting.  The  highest 
type  of  play  is  at  its  best  when  seen  upon  the 
stage.  One  of  the  wonders  of  the  stage,  to  my 
mind,  is  the  number  of  arts  that  are  called 
upon  to  contribute  to  its  productions.  The 
work  of  the  producer  alone  is  an  art  in  itself, 
and  one  far  too  little  appreciated  by  the  un- 
knowing public.  The  choice  of  the  cast  is  an 
art:  it  is  usually  easy  enough  to  think  of  the 
right  actors  for  certain  parts,  though  not  so 
easy  to  find  those  actors  disengaged  when  one 
wants  them;  but  to  blend  a  cast  requires  bal- 
ance and  proportion — sometimes  of  the  finest 
order.  I  have  seen  the  whole  effect  of  a  play 
marred  by  the  fact  that  the  cast  was  not  homo- 
geneous. For  instance,  I  remember  one  play 
in  which  James  Welch  appeared  with  James 
Fernandez — both  fine  actors  in  their  own  way 
— but  Welch  in  those  days  had  a  microscopic 
delicacy  of  style,  while  Fernandez  was  essen- 
tially broad  and  dramatic.  The  result  was  that 
Welch  seemed  finickin  and  Fernandez  crude, 
because  they  were  such  bad  foils  for  each  other. 


6     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

I  merely  mention  this  as  an  instance  of  the 
difficulties  of  casting,  because  I  want  to  lay 
stress  on  the  fact  that  a  manager  ^s  choice  of 
a  play  is  swayed  by  so  many  practical  consid- 
erations which  the  inexperienced  dramatist  is 
apt  to  ignore. 

A  manager  may  sincerely  admire  a  play,  and 
yet  be  afraid  to  risk  its  production  because  he 
cannot  lay  his  hand  on  the  right  person  for  the 
principal  part.  When  choosing  a  play,  he  is 
not  merely  concerned  with  the  play  but  with 
the  whole  production,  and  he  has  a  thousand  de- 
tails to  consider  and  bear  in  mind  in  estimating 
the  probabilities  of  success.  What  the  manager 
wants  is  a  play  that  will  be  effective  when  pro- 
duced, and  that  will  not  be  too  troublesome 
to  produce.  In  short,  he  wants  at  least  a 
** sporting  chance.^'  Some  plays  bristle  with 
difficulties.  It  is  not  exactly  that  they  are  im- 
practicable, but  there  are  too  many  *4fs'^  to 
be  reckoned  with;  *4f''  rightly  cast;  **if^'  pro- 
duced at  the  right  theatre;  ^4f'^  advertised  in 
the  right  way,  the  play  may  be  a  success. 

We  of  the  profession  have  a  pet  phrase  of 
our  own  which  we  use  of  plays ;  we  say  that  cer- 
tain plays  are  ** actor-proof.''  Speaking  gen- 
erally, this  means  that  an  error  in  the  casting 
will  not  militate  seriously  against  their  success. 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     7 

To  this  I  may  add  the  phrase  *  *  audience-proof, ' ' 
by  which  I  mean  that  certain  plays  will  tell 
with  almost  any  audience,  whereas  others,  which 
are  not  audience-proof,  demand  a  special  pub- 
lic. 

Of  course,  all  managers  prefer  a  play  that  is 
actor-proof  and  audience-proof,  and  proof  in 
every  possible  way.  That  goes  without  saying. 
Such  plays  make  a  tremendous  fortune,  and  the 
profits  from  them  go  on  for  a  long  period  of 
years.  But  if  a  manager  cannot  get  perfection 
he  will  take  instead  a  play  that  happens  to  suit 
his  own  requirements;  in  other  words,  a  play, 
the  central  parts  of  which  can  be  filled  by  his 
own  leading  actors ;  a  play  which  suits  his  own 
theatre  and  his  own  clientele.  The  essential 
thing,  however,  is  that  it  shall  be  a  play  to  which 
he  feels  he  can  give  a  suitable  production.  The 
play  is  for  him  merely  a  means  to  a  production, 
and  he  sees  the  result  in  the  terms  of  the  whole 
production,  and  not  merely  from  the  literary 
point  of  view  alone.  In  fact,  so  far  do  we 
carry  this  feeling,  that  if  we  want  to  condemn  a 
play  we  say  of  it  that  it  is  ^^too  literary,  ^^  in 
tones  of  scathing  contempt.  It  does  not  follow 
that  we  .want  a  badly  written  play,  but  it  does 
follow  that  we  want  a  play,  which  will  speak 
well.    The  dialogue  must  trip  naturally  from 


8     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

the  actors'  tongues.  No  amount  of  beautiful 
writing  will  compensate  for  the  frigid  effect  of 
set  speeches  from  the  lips  of  an  actor  unused  to 
speaking  them,  on  the  ears  of  an  audience  which 
has  come  out,  not  for  a  lesson  in  rhetoric,  but 
to  see  the  mirror  held  up  to  nature. 

*  ^  Fine  writing ! ' '    How  often  have  I  heard  a 
producer  belabour  a  poor  dramatist  with  that 
expression,  ^'We  do  not  want  fine  writing!'' 
A  manager  does  not  want  *^fine  writing":  what 
he  wants  is  a  ^'heart-to-heart"  play;  a  bit  of  , 
human  nature  which  will  go  home  when  played 
by  human  beings,  subject,  of  course,  to  the  jus- 
tifiable exaggeration  of  humour  and  to  the  ad- 
justment needed  to  fit  the  theme  to  the  condi- 
tions of  the  stage.     He  wants  something  that 
will  arrest  attention,  and  this  in  itself  is  not 
easy  to  get.     Many  plays  are  written  but  few 
are  chosen,  not  because  the  level  of  playwriting 
is  low — on  the  contrary,  I  know  by  experience 
that  it  is  surprisingly  high — but  because  plays 
have  such  a  tendency  to  resemble  one  another. 
We  get  play  after  play  on  the  same  subject: 
play  after  play  which,  in  spite  of  intelligent 
writing  and  neat  character  drawing,  lacks  grip. 
It  is  interesting  enough  to  read,  but  there  is 
nothing  in  it  to  stage.     The  characters  are  true 
to  nature  but  they  belong  too  much  to  the  com- 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     9 

monplace  average.  The  dialogue  is  easy,  but  it 
does  not  differentiate.  Any  speech  might  be 
spoken  by  any  character.  In  short,  the  whole 
effect  of  the  play  is  tame,  and  one  feels  that  on 
the  stage  it  would  be  tedious.  This  is  not  the 
type  of  play  the  manager  wants.  He  wants 
something  that  lends  itself  to  effective  produc- 
tion, even  though  the  effect  be  that  of  ordinary 
human  conditions — the  sort  of  conditions  to 
which  the  word  ^  ^  effect  * '  would  be  the  last  one 
to  apply.  To  present  such  conditions  nat- 
urally on  the  stage  is  extremely  hard  and  re- 
quires an  immense  amount  of  ingenuity:  un- 
less such  a  theme  is  ingeniously  handled  it  has 
no  stage  value.  Ingenuity  is  the  keynote  to 
many  a  stage  success. 

If  what  the  manager  wants  is  an  effective 
stage  production,  what  the  practical  actor 
wants  is^ — ^what  he  in  his  own  stage  parlance 
calls — a  ^^fat  part.''  He  is  also  out  for  effect. 
I  have  known  many  a  dramatist  try  to  convince 
an  actor  that  he  has  written  a  telling  role.  The 
actor  will  listen  with  an  expression  of  bewilder- 
ment, and  at  the  end  of  the  author's  persuasive 
eloquence  will  simply  exclaim,  ^*But  there  is 
nothing  to  be  done  with  it. "  It  is  by  no  means 
the  longest  part  which  is  the  most  effective. 
The  **fat''  part  is  the  part  which  gives  plenty 


10     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

of  scope  for  the  actor ^s  art;  the  part  in  which 
he  can  make  his  lines  tell  by  the  aid  of  varied 
inflection,  business  and  facial  expression.  I 
have  often  known  an  audience  make  an  extraor- 
dinary mistake  about  the  length  of  a  part :  they 
will  not  realise  that  the  actor  has  not  come  on 
to  the  stage  until  the  act  is  three  parts  through, 
because  their  attention  has  been  directed  to  the 
part  from  the  very  beginning  of  the  play.  They 
have  been  told  about  the  character  by  the  other 
people  in  the  play,  and  their  expectation  has 
been  excited  before  the  actor's  entrance  to  such 
an  extent  that  an  illusory  effect  has  been  pro- 
duced in  their  minds.  It  is  in  points  like  these 
that  the  dramatist's  skill  is  apparent:  no  mere 
verbosity  can  take  the  place  of  stage  technique. 
What  the  practical  actor  must  have  is  a  part 
that  lends  itself  to  playing.  The  conditions  of 
the  stage  must  be  considered  and  used  to  the 
best  advantage:  the  lines  must  be  so  written 
that  their  points  can  be  driven  home  with  ap- 
parent ease.  The  character  drawing  must  be 
of  the  type  that  will  **get  over  the  footlights,'' 
in  other  words,  it  must  stand  out  from  the  ordi- 
nary rut,  having  traits  sufficiently  marked  to 
enable  the  actor  to  present  a  living  character 
sketch  without  any  necessity  for  forcing  the 
note. 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     11 

Outsiders  often  exclaim  at  the  exaggeration 
of  the  stage :  if  they  only  knew,  this  exaggera- 
tion is  often  due  to  an  ill  or  weU-judged  effort 
on  the  part  of  the  producer  to  make  bricks 
without  straw.  I  have  frequently  heard  James 
Welch  say  to  his  company,  *  *  We  must  put  every 
ounce  into  this,  my  boys,  it  is  such  rotten  stuff/' 
On  the  other  hand,  he  would  stop  a  zealous 
actor.  ** Don't  try  to  make  that  line,''  he'd 
say,  ^4t  speaks  itself."  One  of  the  first  eye- 
openers  a  young  dramatist  encounters  when  he 
sees  his  work  in  the  hands  of  a  producer  is  the 
fact  that  good  work  plays  itself,  but  had  work 
requires  from  the  whole  company  an  infinity  of 
care. 


CHAPTER  II 

THINGS  THAT  ABE  ESSENTIAL  IN  A  GOOD  PLAY,  AND 
THOSE  THAT  A  SUCCESSFUL  PLAYWEIGHT  MUST 
AVOID 

I  want  to  be  Irish  and  put  the  cart  before  the 
horse !  It  will  be  clearer,  I  think,  if  I  speak  of 
the  things  to  avoid  before  trying  to  indicate 
essentials  (a  much  more  difficult  matter). 
First  of  all,  it  is  obvious  that  a  dramatist  must 
avoid  creating  a  bad  impression  on  the  man- 
ager. It  is  very  hard  indeed  for  an  inexpe- 
rienced author  to  realise  that  a  manager  is  an 
extremely  busy  man  who  has  not  a  second  of 
his  time  to  waste,  and  who  is  certainly  not 
running  a  philanthropic  institution.  When  of- 
fering him  a  play,  one  must  endeavour  to  im- 
press him  with  the  fact  that  that  play  is  a  com- 
mercial proposition;  that  it  is  not  written  by 
a  greenhorn,  and  that  if  he  loses  money  over  its 
production  the  fault  will  be  his  and  not  the  au- 
thor's. 

Now  managers  have  no  time  to  read  them- 
selves all  the  plays  that  are  sent  in  to  them. 
Plays  come  in  shoals,  in  hurricanes,  in  whirl- 

12 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING      13 

winds!  I,  myself,  have  read  over  a  thousand 
a  year.  Plays,  when  they  reach  a  managerial 
office,  are  read  by  someone  whose  business  it  is 
to  weed  out  the  impossible  and  write  reports 
upon  those  which  are  deemed  sufficiently  prom- 
ising for  the  manager's  own  eye.  These  re- 
ports take  the  form  of  a  short  synopsis  of  the 
plot  and  a  brief  criticism.  The  essence  of  both 
synopsis  and  report  is  brevity.  One  has  to 
summarise  in  a  few  lines,  and  if  there  is  noth- 
ing in  the  play  of  a  nature  sufficiently  striking 
for  the  reader's  report  at  once  to  arrest  the 
manager's  attention,  the  play  will  stand  no 
chance  of  being  read  by  the  manager  at  all.  It 
used  to  be  an  old  axiom  among  dramatic  critics 
and  all  experienced  on  the  stage,  that  if  one 
could  not  summarise  the  central  situation  in 
three  lines  the  play  would  prove  of  insufficient 
backbone  to  arrest  public  attention.  In  other 
words,  a  play  must  be  built  round  a  striking 
situation — something  which  leaps  to  the  eye. 
We  often  say  that  a  play  which  is  to  fill  a  two- 
hour  bill  may  be  comparatively  dull  through- 
out its  progress,  provided  it  contains  one  preg- 
nant quarter  of  an  hour.  In  other  words,  a 
scene  will  make  a  play.  The  thing  to  be  avoided 
above  all  others  by  the  would-be  dramatist  is  a 
theme  that  never  builds  up  to  a  big  moment. 


14     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

I  think  I  had  better  take  this  opportunity  of 
explaining  that  when  I  speak  of  a  big  moment, 
or  of  an  effect,  or  of  a  situation,  I  am  not  neces- 
sarily referring  to  drama.  We  use  these 
phrases  of  all  types  of  plays ;  even  the  lightest 
frivol  will  have  its  big  moment  when  the  laugh- 
ter effervesces  to  its  height;  even  the  simplest 
domestic  drama  will  have  its  effect  when  some 
human  line  in  it  goes  home.  In  short,  the  big 
moment  in  a  play  is  the  moment  when  that  play 
reaches  its  climax,  no  matter  what  type  of  cli- 
max it  may  be.  No  play  is  of  any  use  unless  it 
works  up  to  a  climax,  though  that  climax  may 
be  just  the  height  of  fun.  It  must  build-up. 
The  essential  feature  of  all  playwriting  is  the^ 
knack  of  building-up. 

It  is  obvious  that  a  dramatist  should  avoid 
writing  a  play  which  has  no  story  for  the  reader 
to  summarise  in  his  report.  There  must  be 
some  one  thing  which  the  reader  can  lay  hold  of 
•and  set  before  the  manager  to  attract  his  atten- 
tion to  that  play:  the  colourless  play  stands  no 
chance  whatever  on  the  stage.  But 'for  a  play 
to  receive  due  attention  from  a  reader,  it  is 
necessary  that  certain  iese-  important  matters 
shall  also- be  just  right.  Even  such  an  appar- 
ently superficial  matter  as  the  look  of  the 
manuscript,  the  binding  and  type,  demand  con- 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     15 

sideration.  One  must  always  remember  that  a 
reader  receives  far  too  many  plays,  and  that 
the  dramatist  who  is  worth  while  suffers  for  the 
sins  of  the  Eternal  Bore.  We  cannot  stir  with- 
out being  waylaid  by  the  man  who  assures  us 
that  he  has  written  the  greatest  play  that  ever 
was :  he  buttonholes  us,  and  pours  into  our  re- 
luctant ears  denunciations  of  all  actors,  man- 
agers, and  readers — ourselves  included — and 
tries  to  ram  that  unfortunate  play  down  our 
throats.  So  much  of  our  time  gets  wasted  in 
this  way  that  either  our  legitimate  work  or  our 
own  health  and  well-being  have  to  suffer.  But 
one  thing  is  almost  certain,  and  that  is  that  the 
play  by  the  Eternal  Bore  will  not  be  profession- 
ally typed.  It  is  usually  written  in  his  own  ele- 
gant hand,  and  he  uses  this  as  a  reason  for 
wasting  yet  more  of  our  time  while  he  reads 
the  chef  d^oeuvre  aloud  to  us.  Oh!  the  joy  of 
seeing  a  professionally  typed  manuscript.  Oh ! 
the  relief  to  our  poor,  tired  eyes  to  have  the 
uniform  focus  of  the  standard  machine.  We 
start  those  manuscripts  with  gratitude  in  our 
hearts  towards  the  writer,  and  the  victory  is 
half  won ! 

But  there  are  certain  faults  in  construction 
which,  in  spite  of  a  professionally  typed  manu- 
script, are  apt  to  prejudice  the  reader  and  leave 


16     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

him  with  no  doubt  as  to  the  writer's  inexpe- 
rience. The  worst  and  most  obvious  of  these 
faults  is  the  use  of  soliloquy,  especially  when 
that  sololiquy  opens  the  play.  A  manager^ 
glancing  at  the  first  page  of  a  play  which  opens 
with  a  soliloquy,  will  say :  ^  ^  Inexperienced ;  he 
has  never  had  anything  on,''  and  will,  in  some 
cases,  throw  that  play  down  unread.  I  know  a 
certain  number  of  people  plead  for  the  solilo- 
quy: they  say  it  is  no  more  unnatural  than 
many  other  stage  conventions.  Possibly  not, 
but  it  is  worse  than  unnatural  in  the  manager's 
eyes;  i^  is  out  of  date.     'Nuff  said! 

The  wording  of  stage  directions  is  another 
matter  in  which  the  amateur  gives  himself 
away.  He  commits  one  of  two  faults.  Either 
he  bristles  with  R.,  L.,  C,  UP,  and  so  on,  with 
very  little  idea  of  what  use  he  is  making  of 
these  magic  emblems,  or  else  he  omits  all  stage 
directions  and  runs  his  dialogue  along  un- 
broken, committing  the  mistake  of  supposing 
that  because  he  knows  what  he  wants  to  convey 
he  has  necessarily  conveyed  it. 

An  author  cannot  write  a  good  play  unless 
he  has  a  clear  conception  of  the  scenes  in  which 
he  wishes  the  action  to  take  place.  If  it  is  a 
room  scene,  he  must  see  the  room  and  the  prob- 
able articles  of  furniture  clearly  before  his  eyes, 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     17 

and  must  know  where  the  door  stands  in  rela- 
tion to  the  fire-place  or  window.  Unless  he  is 
clear  about  these  things  he  cannot  expect 
to  raise  a  mental  picture  in  the  mind  of  tha 
reader. 

But  it  is  better  for  him  not  to  be  too  arbi- 
trary in  the  matter  of  other  stage  directions, 
as,  for  a  time  at  least,  he  will  find  it  wiser  to 
leave  such  details  to  the  producer.  Of  course, 
the  main  business — action  which  literally  affects 
the  story — must  be  given/and  it  is  pleasanter 
for  the  reader,  and  customary  nowadays,  for 
such  stage  directions  to  be  written  flowingly, 
as  one  might  write  them  in  a  novel,  keeping 
them,  however,  as  succinct  as  possible.  It  is 
also  essential  that,  even  for  the  setting  down  of 
business  as  structural  as  this,  the  author  should 
be  acquainted  with  our  stage  convention,  and 
should  not  say  R.  when  he  means  L.,  or  UP 
when  he  means  DOWN.  =^He  should  always, 
when  his  play  is  done,  make  a  little  sketch  of  his 
scenes;  the  sort  of  bare  outline  which  we  call 
technically  a  **  scene  plot,'^  and  on  this  scene 
plot  he  should  indicate  how  the  doors  are  to 
open,  whether  on  or  off  the  stage,  and  which 
side  the  hinges  should  be. 

I  give  here  a  little  scene  plot  as  an  illustra- 
tion: 


18     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 


BsckcJoth 


Windoi/v 


The  dotted  lines  represent  the  footlights,  and 
we  speak  of  playing  DOWN  towards  the  foot- 
lights or  UP  towards  the  back  of  the  stage 
where  the  backcloth  is. 

In  the  scene  that  I  have  drawn  here  there 
will  be  backing  outside  the  window;  a  country 
scene,  or  something  which  represents  a  view, 
through  the  window.  There  will  also  be  back- 
ing for  each  of  the  doors,  and  it  is  because  it  is 
important  that  this  backing  should  be  in  the 
right  place,  that  you  have  to  indicate  how  the 
door  is  going  to  hinge  and  open.  In  this  coun- 
try we  take  our  R.  and  L.  from  the  point  of 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     19 

view  of  the  actor  on  the  stage,  exactly  opposite 
to  the  R.  and  L.  of  the  audience  which  is  the 
custom  abroad.  We  often  in  England  hear  the 
L.  side  described  as  the  P.  (Prompt)  side,  and 
the  R.  as  the  O.P.  (Opposite  Prompt).  These 
words,  of  course,  have  arisen  from  the  old  cus- 
tom of  having  the  prompter  stand  in  the  L. 
wing.  The  principal  items  of  furniture  should 
be  indicated  in  a  scene  plot,  but  not  the  unim- 
portant accessories,  as  the  producer  will  fill 
these  in  to  dress  the  stage  according  to  his  own 
idea.  But  it  is  always  necessary  to  indicate 
the  character  of  a  room  scene,  the  social  status 
of  the  owner,  and  the  temperament  and  taste 
that  would  have  guided  its  decorations;  as  it 
is  extremely  important  that  when  the  curtain 
rises  the  audience  should  at  once  perceive  the 
suggestion  which  the  author  wishes  to  convey.^ 

Another  important  thing  for  a  dramatist  to 
remember  is  to  beware  of  creating  an  impres- 
sion on  a  manager's  mind  that  his  play  is  going 
to  be  exceedingly  expensive  to  produce.  I  have 
known  authors  cut  their  own  throats  from  sheer 
ignorance  of  the  managerial  temperament. 
They  have  taken  great  pains  to  set  down  every 
line-part  and  walk-on  in  the  character  list  until 
its  numbers  have  soared  up  into  infinity.  The 
poor,  scared  manager  would  never  look  beyond 


20     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

that  character  list ;  he  would  be  reduced  by  its 
proportions  to  a  state  of  prostration  which 
would  make  the  mental  effort  of  reading  the 
play  impossible  to  him.  Keep  your  Character 
List  doivn.  When  you  have  thought  out  your 
plot  and  decided  that  it  cannot  be  done  under 
eleven  characters,  think  it  over  again  and  re- 
duce that  eleven  to  nine,  and  after  that  put  in 
three  weeks  more  with  a  wet  towel  round  your 
head  and  bring  it  down  to  eight,  and  then  make 
up  your  mind  that  it  has  got  to  be  done  with 
seven!  Cut  every  expensive  detail  ruthlessly 
unless  it  is  absolutely  essential  to  the  well-being 
of  the  play.  If  it  is  possible  to  work  a  double, 
indicate  that  double  in  the  character  list,  for 
though  we  do  not  double  parts  in  London,  to 
be  able  to  do  so  is  of  great  assistance  on  the 
provincial  tours,  as  it  saves  not  only  a  salary 
but  also  a  railway  fare. 

Provided  that  a  play  is  properly  typed ;  that 
the  character  list  is  not  hopelessly  long;  that  it 
is  not  obviously  written  by  a  man  who  knows 
nothing  about  the  stage — it  is  certain  to  get  due 
consideration  from  the  reader.  Its  chances  of 
acceptance,  of  course,  must  depend  on  other 
qualities. 

A  student  at  one  of  my  lectures  once  tried  to 
put  me  in  a  tight  corner.    He  said  to  me, ' '  Now, 


\ 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWEITING     21 

Miss  Piatt,  can  you  tell  us  in  one  word  the  es- 
sential quality  of  a  playf  I  replied,  *^Yes,  I 
can — Loveableness/'  And  that  is  the  essential 
quality  of  a  play.  Talent,  wit,  skill,  ingenuity, 
novelty,  drama,  are  all  great  gifts,  but  they  are 
useless  without  the  greatest  of  all — Charm. 
If  you  can  speak  to  the  imagination  of  your 
audience  and  make  them  dream,  you  have  won. 
No  matter  how  crude  a  play  may  be ;  no  matter 
how  improbable ;  no  matter  how  often  the  theme 
may  have  been  treated  before;  if  we  fall  in 
love  with  the  central  figure  we  will  go  to  see 
that  play  again  and  again.  Personality  is  the 
greatest  quality  in  this  world;  and  where  the 
stage  is  concerned  personality  wins  every  time. 
In  the  old  days,  the  days  of  the  actor-man- 
ager, there  were  many  grumbles  and  grousings 
because  the  personality  of  the  actor-manager 
was  supposed  to  act  as  a  sort  of  tyranny  to  the 
dramatist.  We  have  learnt  by  sad  experience 
that  any  personality  is  better  than  none  at  all, 
and  that  the  actor-manager  is,  at  least,  a  man. 
We  are  now  up  against  that  inhuman  creature 
the  Syndicate :  we  have  changed  King  Log  for 
King  Stork.  Nothing  appeals  to  the  modern 
theatrical  syndicate  but  £  s.  d.  Now  the  one 
thing  that  can  command  money  in  this  world 
is  Charm. 


22     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

There  is  no  charm  in  aggressiveness.  If  you 
have  a  message  to  give  to  the  world  do  not 
gnash  it  out  between  your  teeth :  try  to  get  into 
the  brains  of  those  to  whom  you  wish  to  speak 
your  message,  and  divine  the  form  of  appeal 
which  will  go  home  to  them.  I  read  so  many 
plays  written  with  a  good  purpose.  The  au- 
thors come  clamouring  to  me  and  say,  *'0h! 
but  I  wrote  it  for  such  and  such  a  reason;  it 
ought  to  go  on. ' '  Such  plays  have  been  written 
for  the  purpose  of  doing  good,  but  they  have  not 
been  written  for  the  purpose  of  pleasing  others. 
It  is  possible  to  combine  both  purposes,  and 
the  dramatist  who  succeeds  in  accomplishing 
this  will  rank  among  the  benefactors  of  the  hu- 
man race. 

We  do  not  want  to  be  hopelessly  depressed. 
The  gloomy  play,  dear  to  the  heart  of  many  so- 
cieties, is  not  the  unique  work  of  art  its  wor- 
shippers are  apt  to  imagine.  Ask  any  profes- 
sional reader:  he  will  tell  you  what  I  tell  you, 
that  there  are  numberless  well-written  tragedies 
passing  continually  into  his  hands,  but  a  good 
comedy  is  a  rara  avis.  It  is  quite  easy  to  write 
tragedy.  It  is  quite  easy  to  let  yourself  go  and 
revel  in  horrors — it  is  only  a  form  of  hysteria 
after  all.  But  to  look  on  the  bright  side  of 
things;  to  write  with  a  feeling  heart  for  the 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     23 

sorrows  of  this  world  and  with  an  understand- 
ing mind  of  the  pluck  that  lies  behind  the  smil- 
ing lips  is  an  infinitely  greater  gift.  To  see 
through  petty  faults  to  the  great  qualities  that 
lie  behind,  waiting  for  the  call ;  to  know  that  in 
every  human  being,  however  small,  however 
sordid,  there  lies  the  heart  of  all  humanity; 
and  then  to  touch  that  heart  and  make  it  leap 
to  life — that  is  the  work  of  the  artist.  And  of 
all  hearts  the  heart  of  the  stage,  which  is  a  blend 
of  many  hearts,  should  be  the  one  whose  mis- 
sion it  is  to  speak  to  the  many  in  the  cri  du  coeur 
— the  voice  that  appeals  to  all. 

The  call  of  the  stage  is  universal;  and  it  is 
those  plays  which  have  in  them  the  elements  of 
our  common  nature  which  are  sure  of  their  suc- 
cess. 


CHAPTER  III 

how  to  choose  a  plot;  how  to  decide  upon  its 
teeatment;  how  to  build  up  a  scenario 

We  have  a  habit  of  differentiating  between 
theme  and  plot  when  speaking  of  plays,  and  a 
certain  confusion  sometimes  arises  through  an 
inability  to  distinguish  between  the  two  words. 
The  theme  is  the  idea  that  underlies  the  play: 
the  plot  the  actual  sequence  of  events.  As  an 
instance,  let  us  take  Sheridan's  *^ School  for 
Scandal.''  The  theme  of  that  play  is  the  de- 
teriorating effect  of  society  scandal  and  scan- 
dalmongers upon  the  mind  of  an  innocent  coun- 
try girl.  The  plot  deals  with  the  machinations 
of  the  hypocritical  Joseph  Surface  to  get  Lady 
Teazle  into  his  net  and  her  escape  therefrom, 
with  all  the  incidents  that  go  to  the  making  of 
the  play. 

We  hold  the  theory  that  plot  should  develop 
from  character,  in  other  words,  that  the  inci- 
dents in  a  play  should  spring  naturally  from 
the  relations  of  the  various  characters  to  one 
another.  When  a  dramatist  shuts  his  eyes  to 
character  drawing  and  tries  to  build  up  a  series 

24 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     25 

of  dramatic  incidents  merely  for  the  sake  of 
their  sensation,  he  is  not  holding  up  the  mirror 
to  nature  but  is  spinning  an  arbitrary  structure 
of  his  own  creation.  This  might  appeal  to  a 
certain  extent  for  its  mechanical  ingenuity  but 
could  never  call  upon  the  deeper  appreciation 
of  a  reasonable  mind.  The  whole  art  of  stage 
writing,  as  of  stage  acting,  is  contained  in 
Shakespeare's  phrase,  ^^The  touch  of  Nature,*' 
and  no  incident,  however  thrilling,  will  really 
excite  imagination  unless  we  feel  that  the  peo- 
ple whom  it  affects  are  fellow  human  beings. 
We  stage  people  have  a  habit  of  saying,  when 
we  discuss  plays,  that  the  characters  are  people 
who  are,  or  are  not,  the  kind  of  people  whom 
the  audience  will  care  to  meet ;  in  other  words, 
we  recognise  to  the  full  the  fact,  that  unless  an 
audience  feels  that  it  has  a  personal  knowledge 
of  the  characters  upon  the  stage  and  hails  them 
as  friends  or  enemies,  that  audience  will  not 
take  a  real  interest  in  their  fate.  In  short,  the 
humanity  of  the  characters  is  all  essential,  and 
no  play  will  make  a  success  unless  its  characters 
are  human  beings. 

This  granted,  it  follows  that  the  plot  of  the 
play  must  be  guided  by  the  characters,  and  the 
events  of  the  play  must  spring  from  the  types 
of  characters  and  their  position  in  relation  to 


26     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

one  another.  There  must  be  a  reason  for  all 
things.  An  audience  may  not  be  sufficiently 
clear  in  its  technical  judgment  to  know  exactly 
what  is  wrong  with  a  play ;  but  if  reason  is  not 
duly  considered  in  its  treatment,  the  audience 
will  have  an  unfailing  instinct  that  something 
is  wrong,  and  very  badly  wrong. 

However  unusual  the  situation  round  which  a 
play  turns,  it  must  always  be  probable,  and  the 
details  in  connection  with  it  must  be  so  adjusted 
as  to  make  this  probability  unquestionable. 
We  know  by  our  own  experience  of  life  that  ex- 
traordinary things  are  continually  happening. 
The  long  arm  of  coincidence  is  by  no  means  a 
stage  fiction,  it  is  an  actual  fact.  Therefore 
there  is  no  reason  why  the  principal  incidents 
of  a  play  should  not  be  both  dramatic  and  strik- 
ing, but  their  details  must  be  adjusted  with  an 
eye  to  probability,  and,  above  all,  they  must  be 
in  keeping  with  the  tendencies  of  the  characters. 
The  action  of  a  play  should  spring  from  the 
character  drawing,  and  seem  to  us  its  reason- 
able fulfilment. 

In  the  choice  of  a  plot  one  must  always  bear 
in  mind  the  conditions  of  the  stage,  and,  above 
all,  the  length  of  time  allowed  for  a  stage  play, 
and  the  form  into  which  it  is  to  be  shaped.  It 
is  seldom  advisable  to  choose  for  a  theme  one 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     27 

which  requires  the  development  and  change  of 
character.  There  are  exceptions  to  every  rule, 
and  we  have  had  successful  plays  which  have 
turned  upon  a  very  great  psychological  change, 
usually  for  the  better,  in  some  principal  char- 
acter, as,  for  instance,  Dick  Phenyl  in  **  Sweet 
Lavender,''  and  Goldfinch  in  **A  Pair  of  Spec- 
tacles. ' '  These  plays,  however,  fulfil  admirably 
all  the  requirements  of  a  successful  play;  they 
are  intensely  human,  and  the  incidents  all 
tend  to  develop  the  character  drawing.  The 
theme  of  each  play  is  this  psychological  devel- 
opment of  character,  but  then  in  each  case  the 
transformation  wrought  is  of  a  kind  which  pro- 
ceeds naturally  from  one  particular  influence, 
and  therefore,  could  easily  be  set  forth  in  a 
play  which  showed  the  coming  of  the  influence 
across  the  path  of  the  character  and  the  result- 
ing events.  The  type  of  psychological  change 
which  it  is  difficult  to  work  in  a  play  is  the  type 
which  takes  place  gradually,  because  due  to  an 
accumulation  of  influences  acting  along  the 
years.  Speaking  generally,  a  theme  which 
takes  too  long  a  time  to  develop  is  a  theme 
which  does  not  lend  itself  to  stage  treatment, 
unless  the  very  essence  of  the  theme  lies  in  the 
lapse  of  years  between  each  incident,  as  in  the 
case  of  *  ^  Milestones. ' ' 


28     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

/  When  choosing  a  theme  for  the  stage  one 
must  always  bear  in  mind  the  fact  that  a  play 
must  work  up  to  a  climax.  Unless  there  is  an 
increasing  interest  and  development  there  is 
no  play:  monotony  upon  the  stage  is  always 
deadly. 

The  simplest  form  of  plot  for  a  novice  to 
handle  is  that  which  centres  round  a  big  situa- 
tion. This  situation  should  come  to  its  climax 
in  the  penultimate  act  of  the  play.  The  first 
act  will  be  more  or  less  introductory,  and  the 
last  act  a  rounding  off  and  a  knitting  together 
of  the  various  threads  employed  in  the  play. 
It  is  much  easier  to  write  a  play  which  depends 
upon  a  big  situation  than  to  handle  a  subject  of 
a  more  leisurely  kind,  where  events  are  not  of 
an  exciting  nature.  In  other  words,  drama  is 
easier  to  handle  than  comedy,  because,  given  the 
big  situation  which  makes  it  drama,  it  prac- 
tically writes  itself ;  but  comedy  depends  upon 
finish  and  detail,  and,  above  all,  upon  the  pol- 
ished wit  of  its  dialogue.  Farce,  on  the  other 
hand,  may  be  either  very  difficult  or  very  easy 
to  write.  It  is  not  easy  to  hit  upon  a  really 
laughable  theme ;  they  are  very  f ew^  and  far  be- 
tween; but,  given  a  situa,tion  that  is  in  itself 
funny,  it  is  comparatively  easy  to  build-up  the 
structure  of  a  farce  if  one  has  the  knack  of  let- 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLATWEITING     29 

ting  oneself  go  and  rioting  irresponsibly  in  the 
fnn  that  springs  naturally  from  the  situation. 
On  the  other  hand,  a  farce  that  does  not  build 
round  a  really  funny  situation  is  a  very  diffi- 
cult thing  to  construct,  as  it  has  to  be  fostered 
and  coddled,  and  built-up  by  the  artifice  of  witty 
line  and  humorous  character  drawing,  droll 
incident  and  burlesque  business,  until  more  in- 
genuity has  been  bestowed  upon  it  than  would 
go  to  the  writing  of  an  encyclopaedia.  It  is  al- 
ways marvellous  to  me  that  people  despise 
farce.  If  the  writing  of  farce  were  really  the 
cheap  and  easy  thing  the  supercilious  think  it 
we  should  have  little  else  upon  the  stage,  for 
nothing  pays  so  well  as  a  good  farce.  But, 
alas!  they  are  very  few  and  far  between;  the 
good  farce  is  epoch-making. 

In  starting  to  write  a  play  one  has  to  bear  in 
mind  the  exigencies  of  play-form,  by  which,  of 
course,  I  mean  the  divisions  into  acts.  Some 
of  our  modern  audiences  are  impatient  at  the 
intervals  which  are,  however,  necessary  to  rest 
the  principal  members  of  the  cast,  and  which 
are  as  welcome  to  one  section  of  the  audience 
as  they  are  anathematised  by  the  other.  We,  of 
the  inner  circle,  are  all  bending  our  brains  to 
think  of  plans  by  which  our  plays  can  be 
bridged  over  between  the  acts  by  an  interlude 


30     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

of  such  a  nature  that  the  principal  members  of 
the  cast  will  not  be  employed  in  it,  and  half  the 
audience  can  go  out  if  they  wish.  But,  until 
this  new  method  has  been  devised,  plays  will 
still  continue  to  be  written  in  the  old  three  or 
four  act  form,  and  it  is  of  this  form  that  we  will 
now  speak. 

Each  act  must  finish  with  an  effective  cur- 
tain, and  the  interest  in  each  act  should  pro- 
gress in  an  ascending  scale ;  the  note  of  the  final 
curtain  being  one  which,  as  we  say  in  our  fa- 
miliar slang,  will  ^^send  the  audience  away 
happy.''  I  wish  to  lay  particular  stress  on  the 
fact  that  the  interest  must  be  on  an  ascending 
scale.  It  is  quite  a  commonplace  among  us  that 
nine  plays  out  of  ten  will  boast  *'the  best  first 
act  you  have  ever  read. ' '  Author  after  author 
comes  round  to  me  with  this  pleasing  intelli- 
gence to  retire  utterly  crushed  when  I  quote 
our  managerial  axiom:  ^'Too  good  a  first  act 
damns  the  play."  Yet  the  reason  for  this  is 
obvious.  If  you  awaken  in  the  minds  of  the 
audience  anticipation  w^hich  you  do  not  after- 
wards fulfil,  you  are  bound  to  send  them  away 
dissatisfied.  An  extremely  good  first  act 
touches  a  level  which  it  is  impossible  to  main- 
tain, and  the  result  can  only  be  anti-climax. 

The  note  of  a  first  act  should  be  expectancy. 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     31 

The  characters  must  be  introduced  and  the  gen- 
eral position  explained  quite  easily  and  natur- 
ally, so  that  the  explanation  is  discreetly  veiled 
and  yet  perfectly  clear;  and  the  whole  action 
of  the  act  should  lead  us  gently  on  to  the  ex- 
pectation of  something  very  interesting  to  come. 

In  the  second  act — if  the  play  is  in  four-act 
form — ^we  need  a  development  of  this  expect- 
ancy and  the  shadow  cast  by  coming  events  in 
darker  and  more  startling  hues.  In  the  third 
act  the  events  themselves;  and  in  the  fourth 
act  a  solution  of  the  difficulty  which  should  take 
the  form  of  a  surprise;  for  a  last  act  which  is 
simply  a  foregone  conclusion  is  a  thing  which 
no  modern  manager  will  consider  for  one  mo- 
ment. 

Everything  depends  on  the  progress  of  the 
action ;  and  perhaps  it  would  be  as  well  for  me 
to  explain  here  what  the  word  '^action" — so  fa- 
miliarly used  where  plays  are  concerned — really 
means.  Action  is  anything  that  makes  for 
movement.  Either  the  development  of  events, 
or  the  tightening  of  interest,  or  business  relat- 
ing to  humour,  or  the  working  up  of  a  humorous 
situation;  anything  that  gives  scope  for  move- 
ment on  the  stage ;  a  significant  change  of  posi- 
tion or  facial  expression;  everything,  in  short, 
that  is  not  merely  spoken  dialogue.    Even  dia- 


32     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

logue  itself  may  be  in  the  nature  of  action  if 
it  develops  the  progress  of  the  plot. 

The  worst  fault  a  play  can  have  is  lack  of 
action.  As  I  have  said  before,  the  primary 
appeal  of  the  stage  is  to  the  eye.  If  the  eye 
is  interested  the  ear  will  listen,  but  not  other- 
wise. If  we  merely  wished  to  hear  we  should 
go  to  a  lecture.  When  we  go  to  the  stage  we 
expect  to  see  the  presentment  of  character  and 
events,  and  it  is  that  presentment  that  gives  the 
stage  its  peculiar  charm.  Action  is,  therefore, 
the  most  essential  quality  in  any  play,  and  in 
choosing  a  plot  action  must  be  the  first  con- 
sideration. A  play  that  does  not  lend  itself  to 
action  is  practically  useless  for  the  stage.  It 
would  be  better  to  treat  it  in  novel  form,  the 
easy  narrative  of  which  could  carry  us  along 
through  a  leisure  hour  without  an  undue  tax  on 
our  patience  or  the  author's  ingenuity.  But 
where  the  stage  is  concerned  action  is  a  sine 
qua  non,  and  a  plot  that  does  not  lend  itself  to 
action  is  better  eschewed. 

Having  chosen  the  plot,  which  must  contain 
in  itself  the  germs  of  the  principal  characters, 
one  must  see  that  plot  in  scenes,  and  the  number 
of  scenes  must  be  kept  strictly  down  to  the  exi- 
gencies of  stage  structure.  Some  plots  shape 
themselves  easily  into  three  or  four  scenes, 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLATWRITING     33 

which  become,  of  course,  the  three  or  four  acts 
of  the  play.  Others  require  considerable  han- 
dling before  they  can  be  shaped  into  the  requi- 
site form.  One  sees  them,  first  of  all,  in  too 
many  scenes,  and  some  readjustment  of  the 
main  idea  is  needed  to  fit  them  to  stage  require- 
ments. One  curious  point  forces  itself  on  the 
attention  of  anyone  accustomed  as  I  am  to  al- 
tering plays  to  suit  the  requirements  of  various 
managers,  and  this  is  that  practically  every 
theme  can  be  seen  from  several  points  of  view 
and  would  develop  equally  well  in  very  different 
ways. 

A  few  years  ago  there  were  two  plays  in  the 
west-end,  one  a  farce  and  the  other  a  drama; 
as  different  in  quality,  therefore,  as  they  could 
be,  but  which  were  yet  built  on  the  same  main 
idea.  In  each  play  the  principal  character  has 
been  told  in  the  first  act  that  he  (or  she)  has 
only  a  very  short  while  to  live,  and  the  other  two 
acts  deal  with  the  effect  of  this  intelligence  on 
that  character  and  the  events  it  brings  in  its 
train.  The  two  plays  of  which  I  speak  were 
** Never  say  Die,'*  one  of  the  most  delightful 
farces  in  which  Charles  Hawtrey  has  ever  ap- 
peared, and  *^ Driven'' — Temple  Thurston's 
very  interesting  comedy  done  at  the  Haymarket 
with  Alexandra  Carlisle  in  the  principal  part. 


34    PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

In  spite  of  this  similarity  of  theme  no  two  plays 
could  possibly  have  differed  more  in  plot,  the 
treatment  in  each  case  being  as  the  poles  asun-i 
der. 

* '  An  author  must,  first  of  all,  decide  upon  the 
type  of  treatment  which  he  is  going  to  give  to 
his  play.  Having  made  up  his  mind  upon  the 
main  lines,  he  must  then  bring  his  intelligence 
to  bear  upon  the  far  more  difficult  matter  of 
handling  his  work  in  such  a  way  that  it  shall 
seem  both  natural  and  new.  It  is  easy  to  be 
original  if  one  sets  probability  at  defiance:  it 
is  easy  to  be  natural  if  one  is  humdrum.  But 
to  be  both  original  and  natural ;  to  create  from 
beginning  to  end  of  one's  play  an  impression 
of  spontaneity  so  that  the  whole  thing  shall 
seem  to  be  taking  place  at  that  moment  before 
the  eyes  of  the  audience,  and  the  illusion  never 
be  disturbed  by  the  intruding  thought  of  the 
author's  mental  effort,  is  a  very  difficult  thing. 
It  is  the  cream  of  the  dramatist's  art  to  keep 
the  illusion  perfect  from  beginning  to  end,  and 
that  can  never  be  if  the  technique  is  visible.  All 
suggestion  of  the  laborious  must  be  carefully 
hidden  away.  I  think  myself  that  it  is  wiser 
for  an  author  to  build-up  his  scenario  before 
starting  to  write  his  play.  Before  I  give  any 
advice  on  this  subject  I  want  to  explain  that 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     35 

we  use  the  word  ^* scene"  in  a  double  sense. 
Firstly,  we  use  it  to  mean  the  scenery,  and, 
secondly,  we  use  it  to  refer  to  that  portion  of 
the  dialogue  which  is  spoken  with  one  set  of 
characters  on  the  stage.  Directly  another 
character  comes  on,  or  one  of  those  already  on 
goes  off,  we  call  it  a  *  Afresh  scene."  For  in- 
stance, in  Shakespeare *s  ** Merchant  of  Venice" 
the  play  opens  with  Antonio,  Salarino,  and  So- 
lanio.  This,  in  the  sense  in  which  we  are  now 
using  the  word,  is  a  scene.  Then  Bassanio, 
Lorenzo,  and  Gratiano  come  on:  there  are  now 
six  people  on  the  stage.  This  is  another  scene. 
Eventually  Lorenzo,  Gratiano,  Solanio  and  Sa- 
larino go  off,  leaving  Bassanio  and  Antonio, 
making  yet  another  scene ;  and  in  foreign  plays 
this  is  the  sole  way  in  which  the  word  *  ^  scene ' ' 
is  used.  It  is  in  this  sense  that  we  shall  have  to 
use  the  word  when  speaking  of  building-up  a 
scenario.^ 

When  you  have  decided  upon  your  characters 
and  plot,  arrange  the  progress  of  that  plot  in 
such  a  way  that  the  action  will  shape  itself  into 
three  or  four  acts,  being  careful  to  keep  the 
climax  of  the  action  for  the  end  of  the  penulti- 
mate act.  Then  ^x  upon  your  ** curtains"  so 
that  each  act  builds-up  to  something  of  a  cli- 
max, and  the  act  ends  at  a  moment  strong 


36     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

enough  to  maintain  the  interest  in  the  minds 
of  the  audience  during  the  interval. 

Having  thus  broadly  divided  your  action  into 
parts  which  correspond  with  the  acts,  take  each 
act  by  itself  and  make  a  rough  list  of  the  scenes 
that  will  be  required  for  that  act  in  their  due 
order.  For  instance,  to  speak  again  of  the 
^'Merchant  of  Venice,'*  the  scenario  of  Act  I, 
Scene  I,  would  be  as  follows : — 

Scene.     On  the  Rialto, 

Antonio,  Solanio,  Salarino. 

Antonio,  Solanio,  Salarino,  Bassanip,  Lorenzo, 

Gratiano. 
Antonio,  Bassanio. 

This  indicates  the  people  who  will  be  on  in 
each  scene,  and  if  the  author  cannot  trust  his 
memory,  or  wishes  to  submit  the  scenario  for 
an  expert's  opinion,  he  should  add  a  few  words 
on  the  business  of  each  scene  after  the  names  of 
the  characters  in  it: 

Scene.     On  the  Rialto. 

Antonio,  Solanio,  Salarino. 

They  talk  of  Antonio's  sadness  and  the  reason 

for    it:    ^*His    argosies    tossing    on    the 

ocean,"  etc. 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     37 

Antonio,  Solanio,  Salarino,  Bassanio,  Lorenzo, 

Gratiano. 
They  continue  the  discussion. 
Antonio,  Bassanio. 
Bassanio  wishes  to  borrow  money  of  Antonio 

to  enable  him  to  go  to  Belmont  and  woo 

Portia,  whose  father  has  left  a  curious  will. 

Antonio  tells  him  he  has  not  the  money,  but 

will  use  his  credit  to  procure  it. 

When  he  has  thus  made  a  skeleton  of  the  ac- 
tion of  his  whole  play  he  can  begin  to  write  it 
with  less  fear  that  his  pen  will  run  away  with 
him,  otherwise  the  pleasure  of  writing  some 
particular  scene  might  lead  him  to  dwell  on  it 
in  a  way  that  would  throw  out  the  proportions 
of  the  whole  play. 

When  writing  the  play  he  should  rough  out 
his  dialogue,  first  bearing  in  mind  the  fact  that 
he  must  go  carefully  over  every  line  of  the  play 
after  it  is  written,  and  write  it  up  for  crispness, 
wit,  and  humour.  After  a  play  is  written  it 
has  to  be  rewritten  and  rewritten  again,  because 
every  little  extra  bit  of  polish  and  finish  is  in- 
valuable. The  structure,  however,  must  be  got 
right  before  this  polishing  can  be  attempted, 
as,  if  the  play  is  structurally  wrong,  it  will 
never  hold  the  attention  of  an  audience. 


CHAPTER  IV 

HOW  TO  SELECT  AND  DIFFERENTIATE  THE  CHAR- 
ACTERS 

I  have  said  in  the  preceding  chapter  that  the 
plot  chosen  must  contain  in  itself  the  germs  of 
the  principal  characters;  in  other  words,  that 
the  plot  must  develop  from  the  characters.  It 
is  obvious  that  this  plot  is  not  going  to  be  inter- 
esting unless  the  characters  concerned  in  it  are 
interesting.  Any  plot  which  turns  upon  the 
meaner  qualities  of  our  human  nature  is  better 
avoided,  imless  it  is  possible  to  set  these  little 
human  foibles  before  us  in  such  a  way  that  they 
only  increase  our  sense  of  fellow-feeling,  as 
has  been  done  successfully  by  the  great  come- 
dians of  all  time.  Goldsmith ^s  *'She  Stoops  to 
Conquer''  has  a  main  plot  which  is  built  en- 
tirely round  the  foible  of  bashfulness — a  bash- 
fulness,  moreover,  which  takes  the  very  human 
form  of  rushing  into  boastfulness  on  certain 
occasions.  Yet  the  whole  comedy  is  full  of 
charm,  because  young  Marlowe,  in  spite  of  this 
weakness — one  might  even  say  because  of  it — 
has  the  dear,  lovable  heart  of  gold  so  character- 

38 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     39 

istic  of  his  author.  Write  round  the  sins  and 
follies  and  temptations  of  this  world  by  all 
means,  but  be  careful  to  fill  in  all  the  details 
of  the  character.  Place  the  sterling  qualities 
side  by  side  with  the  human  weaknesses,  and 
above  all,  never  forget  the  all-important  Charm. 

One  of  the  worst  faults  a  play  can  possess  is 
want  of  individuality  in  its  leading  parts. 
Many  a  one  comes  into  my  hands  in  which  all 
the  secondary  characters  are  admirably  touched 
off;  they  are  what  we  call  ** character  parts, *' 
and  their  idiosyncrasies  are  distinctively  and 
nicely  handled ;  but  the  leading  part  is  merely 
that  of  a  walking  gentleman,  a  lay  figure,  as 
little  like  a  real  human  being  as  a  tailor's 
dummy. 

It  is  apparently  more  difficult  to  draw  lov- 
able youth  than  likeable  age — the  fault  usually 
proceeding  from  a  too  great  desire  to  aim  at 
perfection.  In  trying  to  present  a  hero  with 
no  vices,  we  fall  too  often  into  the  error  of  writ- 
ing a  leading  character  with  no  traits  of  any 
kind  whatever.  He  speaks  correctly,  dots  his 
*4's,''  and  one  feels  that  he  would  wear  im- 
maculate clothes  and  always  do  exactly  the  right 
thing — but  he  leaves  one  frozen  to  the  very  mar- 
row of  one 's  bones.  The  heroine  is  even  worse ! 
If  she  sheds  a  well-behaved  tear  one  is  sure  that 


40     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

she  would  never  blow  her  nose!  Unless  the 
author  has  the  divine  gift  of  wit  he  is  apt  to 
give  no  colour  to  his  leading  part  whatever. 
Yet  it  is  not  necessary  for  a  hero  to  bubble  over 
with  brilliance :  one  can  have  too  much  of  a  good 
thing,  and  even  the  sparkling  hero  of  American 
comedy,  admirable  as  is  each  presentment  of 
him,  might  in  time  become  monotonous. 

There  are  other  lovable  characteristics  be- 
sides breeziness.  Even  silence  can  be  made  to 
speak.  The  one  great  thing  is  to  have  a  dom- 
inating trait  in  every  leading  character.  We 
may  feel  we  hate  him  and  end  by  loving  him  if 
he  is  strong  enough  to  stir  emotion  in  us.  The 
unforgivable  sin  is  the  character  that  does  not 
live,  never  has  lived,  never  could  live,  because 
he  is  not  a  living  being  but  a  mere  creation  of 
colourless  words. 

I  said  in  my  first  chapter  that  the  great  qual- 
ity characteristic  of  all  stage  success  is  ensem- 
ble. Even  the  author's  task  of  writing  the  play 
depends  for  its  success  upon  ensemble.  You 
want  a  wide  outlook  where  the  stage  is  con- 
cerned :  the  gift  of  the  embracing  eye.  No  one 
scene  in  a  play  can  be  written  for  itself  alone ; 
the  balance  of  the  whole  is  all-important. 

It  is  perfectly  true  that  it  is  only  the  big 
scene  in  a  play  which  really  counts ;  but  if  this 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     41 

big  scene  is  to  make  its  effect  all  the  rest  of  the 
play  must  be  a  preparation  and  development 
of  it.  We  have  in  our  stage  slang  one  very  ef- 
fective word — we  speak  of  certain  parts  as 
**feeding'^  parts,  and  say  of  certain  actors  that 
they  are  **good  feeders.''  A  ^'feeding"  part 
is  a  part  that  feeds  another  part.  A  **good 
feeder"  is  ail  actor  w^hose  work  is  so  unselfishly 
artistic  that  everything  he  does  upon  the  stage 
tends  to  increase  the  value  of  the  work  of  the 
other  actors.  No  good  feeder  ever  gets  his  due 
appreciation  from  the  audience,  but  we,  inside 
the  profession,  know  that  to  be  a  good  feeder 
is  the  rarest,  and  from  the  artistic  point  of. 
view  the  most  valuable,  of  all  qualities.  It  is 
to  my  mind  a  temperamental  quality,  and  re- 
quires both  unselfishness  and  brain.  Well,  in 
exactly  the  same  way  the  less  important  scenes 
in  a  play  should  be  all  feeding  scenes:  every 
word  should  go  to  the  building-up  of  the  big 
point.  In  a  similar  manner  all  the  characters 
should  be  chosen  with  a  view  to  the  ensemble, 
and  apart  from  their  own  value  must  have  the 
additional  value  of  feeding  the  principal  parts. 
In  other  words,  they  must  be  carefully  chosen 
as  foils  to  one  another. 

Even  the  appearance  of  the  characters  must 
be  considered  with  reference  to  the  ensemble. 


42     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

as  on  these  things  the  whole  illusion  hangs. 
I  have  known  a  dramatist  for  the  sake  of  a  little 
fun  introduce  a  humorous  character  who  was 
entirely  out  of  keeping  with  the  social  atmos- 
phere of  the  play,  and,  when  this  was  pointed 
out  to  him,  he  said  it  would  be  the  manager's 
business  to  get  an  actor  who  could  play  it  in 
such  a  manner  that  it  would  not  be  out  of 
keeping!  Authors  expect  such  miracles  from 
actors ! 

The  necessity  for  keeping  the  illusion  abso- 
lutely unbroken  will  often  oblige  an  author 
to  sacrifice  a  good  idea  if  it  is  out  of  keeping 
with  the  tone  of  the  main  theme.  Violent  con- 
trasts are  dangerous,  yet  contrast  is  most  nec- 
essary. The  old  saying  that  ^ '  everything  is  by 
comparison ''  is  particularly  true  of  the  stage, 
and  the  value  of  no  scene  will  be  felt  to  the  full 
unless  it  is  thrown  into  relief  by  contrasting 
scenes.  This  contrast  of  scene  must  depend 
largely  on  a  well-judged  contrast  of  character, 
since  the-  wording  of  the  dialogue  will  turn 
upon  the  type  of  phrase  that  would  be  typical 
of  each  character. 

Yet  though  contrast  is  very  necessary,  prob- 
ability is  equally  important.  I  have  often  been 
amazed  at  the  strain  that  is  put  on  our  credu- 
lity in  the  drawing  of  the  members  of  one  fam- 


/" 


PBACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     43 

ily.  It  is  sometimes  impossible  to  believe  that 
any  parents  could  have  such  widely  differing 
offspring,  and  the  relative  ages  of  their  chil- 
dren make  imagination  gasp!  If  one  turns  to 
the  works  of  great  writers  one  will  find, 
that,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  their  genius 
has  guided  them  aright  in  this  matter,  even 
though  they  may  have  lived  and  written  cen- 
turies before  the  subject  of  heredity  was  scien- 
tificaly  considered.  Take  Shakespeare,  for  ex- 
ample; what  children  could  be  more  typical  of 
Polonious  than  Laertes  and  Ophelia,  and  is  not 
Hamlet  himself  the  inevitable  son  of  his  war- 
like father  and  charming,  inconstant  mother? 
I  am  quite  sure  that  Shakespeare  held  no  the- 
ories on  the  subject  of  heredity;  he  merely 
wrote  as  his  innate  sense  of  proportion  dic- 
tated. All  authors  are  conscious  of  this  innate 
sense,  but  its  manifestations,  where  their  actual 
work  is  concerned,  are  sometimes  hard  to  dis- 
cover. However,  they  are  always  willing  to 
come  round  and  point  them  out! 

I  freely  concede  the  fact  that  an  audience 
taken  as  a  whole  can  be  exceedingly  dense;  it 
is  one  of  the  first  duties  of  a  dramatist  to  be 
sure  that  he  has  made  his  meaning  perfectly 
clear.  He  cannot  afford  to  take  any  risks,  and 
where  a  large  number  of  people  are  concerned 


44     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

there  is  always  the  risk  that  the  attention  of  a 
certain  proportion  will  be  diverted  at  a  critical 
moment  so  that  some  very  necessary  explana- 
tory line  fails  to  reach  their  ears.  Therefore  it 
is  well  to  say,  and  say  again,  everything  that  is 
vital  to  the  development  of  the  plot,  and  for  the 
same  reason  it  is  essential  to  lay  stress  on  the 
dominating  attributes  of  the  various  charac- 
ters. But  though  an  audience  can  be  dense,  it 
is  also  in  many  ways  singularly  sensitive ;  sen- 
sitive above  all  things  to  impressions,  with- 
out always  knowing  why.  It  feels  in  a  mo- 
ment the  jar  of  a  discordant  note.  Although  it 
will  not  be  able  to  put  its  finger  on  that  discord 
and  explain  exactly  what  it  is  that  has  shocked 
its  susceptibilities,  yet  the  sense  of  shock  re- 
mains: it  is  as  if  one  were  rudely  awakened 
from  a  dream.  This  keen  susceptibility  on  the 
part  of  an  audience  makes  it  necessary  to  have 
every  detail  of  the  character  drawing  of  a  play 
well  adjusted,  for  however  unintellectual  we 
may  be  and  however  dormant  our  reasoning 
faculties,  we  are  all  human,  and  we  have  within 
us  an  instinct  of  human  nature.  If  the  charac- 
ters are  unconvincing  the  play  will  be  uncon- 
vincing, and  no  amount  of  clever  writing  will 
atone. 

The  characters  must  be  lifelike,  but  an  audi- 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     45 

ence  may  be  trusted  to  jump  quickly  to  the  im- 
pression of  the  entire  character  if  the  keynote 
of  that  character  is  sounded  with  decision. 
Moliere,  whose  comedies  will  go  down  for  all 
time  as  the  triumph  of  satiric  truth,  made  his 
vivid  impression  by  the  firm  way  in  which  he 
seized  upon  a  dominating  quality,  and  sounded 
that  note  again  and  again  and  again,  until  he 
left  upon  the  mind  of  the  onlooker  the  impres- 
sion of  the  full  enharmonic  values  of  that  note. 
When  we  read  ^'L'avare'*  we  think  not  of 
avarice  only  but  of  the  whole  gamut  and  com- 
binations of  the  avaricious  nature.  We  see, 
not  the  one  thing,  but  all  that  springs  from  it. 
In  writing  for  the  stage,  one  must  never  fail 
to  strike  one's  note  with  decision. 

The  whole  conditions  of  the  stage  are  beyond 
nature.  The  space  of  a  stage  is  beyond  that 
of  an  average  room;  the  lighting  is  infinitely 
more  brilliant ;  voices  have  to  be  raised,  and  ex- 
pression and  gesture  magnified.  So  only  can 
a  natural  illusion  be  produced,  since  it  is  ob- 
vious that  the  stage  itself  being  life  size,  a  life 
size  effect  seen  in  that  setting  would  appear 
more  insignificant  than  life  itself. 

To  produce  a  lifelike  illusion  on  the  stage  one 
has  to  exaggerate  in  proportion  to  the  propor- 
tions of  the  stage:  in  the  same  way  must  the 


46     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

author  who  writes  for  the  stage  suit  his  propor- 
tions to  the  conditions  of  the  stage.  He  must 
underline  and  emphasise  what  is  essential,  and 
he  must  eliminate  what  is  not  essential. 

In  handling  his  characters  he  must  seize 
upon  the  important  characteristic  and  pin  it 
down,  drawing  the  attention  of  the  audience  to 
that  characteristic  and  keeping  it  there.  Illu- 
sion thus  created  will  enable  the  audience  to 
jump  to  his  intention  and  to  fill  in  details  for 
themselves.  But  if  there  is  any  uncertainty  in 
the  writing,  so  that  the  character  is  shadowy 
in  outline  and  vague  in  its  intent,  the  audience 
will  receive  no  clear  message  from  the  stage, 
and  will  go  home  with  the  unsatisfied  feeling 
that  they  have  been  given  a  stone  for  bread. 

The  types  of  character  for  stage  use  should 
not  be  too  difficult  to  understand.  Intricate 
psychology  is  very  dangerous ;  there  is  no  time 
to  develop  it  in  detail,  and  a  stage  performance 
does  not  allow  of  that  careful  study  on  the  part 
of  its  audience  that  a  book  would  get  from  an 
intelligent  reader.  When  enjoying  a  work  by 
Henry  James,  if  any  little  point  is  not  clear  to 
one,  one  can  turn  back  and  reread  a  previous 
passage.  But  if  through  any  cause  some  im- 
portant point  in  a  play  should  not  reach  the  in- 
telligence of  the  audience,  they  cannot  stop  the 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     47 

play  and  say,  **Will  you  kindly  give  us  that 
scene  again  T'  They  have  to  leap  to  the  au- 
thor's intention  impressionistically  then  and 
there,  and  for  this  reason  impressionist  work  is 
frequently  the  most  telling  where  the  stage  is 
concerned. 

Originality  is  a  great  gift,  but  a  very  unusual 
type  of  character  is  better  avoided,  as  the 
greater  part  of  the  audience  would  probably  re- 
fuse to  believe  in  its  existence.  What  one 
wants  in  this,  as  in  most  details  of  stage  work, 
is  the  happy  blend  of  novelty  and  age-long 
truth.  We  must  have  the  types  with  whom  we 
are  familiar  in  everyday  life,  the  types  we  rec- 
ognise at  a  glance  as  real  human  beings;  but 
we  must  also  have  the  touch  of  illusion  in  the 
charm  with  which  these  types  are  presented  to 
us.  If  every  man  in  the  audience  can  put  him- 
self ideally  in  the  position  of  the  hero,  if  every 
woman  sees  herself  as  the  heroine,  the  play  is 
absolutely  assured  of  success,  and  for  this  re- 
sult to  be  achieved,  hero  and  heroine  need  only 
have  in  them  the  broad  traits  that  are  common 
to  us  all.  But  they  must  have  character:  if 
they  are  colourless  they  will  make  no  impres- 
sion on  our  imaginations. 

Even  as  a  grousy,  discontented  mind,  though 
it  may  win  a  certain  reluctant  admiration  for 


48     PEACTICAL  HIxNTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

its  cleverness,  never  really  makes  friends  and  is 
never  really  acceptable  as  a  companion,  so  a 
grousy,  discontented  point  of  view  is  never  the 
point  of  view  that  is  going  to  help  the  success 
of  a  play.  Make  fun  of  this  point  of  view  if 
you  please ;  use  it  in  a  secondary  character,  as 
Goldsmith  used  it  in  old  Craker ;  call  on  the  au- 
dience to  laugh  at  it,  and  you  may  make  a  hit; 
but  to  write  your  play  from  a  peevish  point  of 
view  and  call  it  realism  is  simply  to  ask  the 
world  to  pay  money  for  a  fit  of  depression! 
Grousy  writing  does  no  one  any  good  and  never 
will.  It  seems  to  me  narrowing,  spine-snap- 
ping, irritating;  and  at  the  back  of  my  mind  I 
cherish  the  conviction  that  writing  of  that  sort 
is  very  easy  to  do ! 

Take  the  bright  point  of  view  because  it  is 
the  broad  point  of  view,  and  because  any  other 
point  of  view  is  simply  cowardly.  See  the  evils 
of  life  merely  for  what  they  are — the  necessary 
ills  which  teach  us  to  appreciate  and  to  which 
we  owe  by  contrast  our  whole  faculty  of  enjoy- 
ment. Lay  on  the  dark  colours  only  that  they 
may  heighten  the  uplifting  power  of  the  light. 

Let  us  have  people  about  us  whom  we  can 
like;  people  who  increase  our  sense  of  comfort 
and  goodwill.  It  is  just  as  unpleasant  to  meet 
tiresome  people  on  the  stage  as  it  is  to  meet 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     49 

them  in  real  life ;  it  is  just  as  dragging  to  have 
to  watch  the  vampire  type  grouse  through  a 
play  as  to  have  him  buttonholing  one  and 
draining  out  one's  energy  in  one's  daily  ex- 
istence. Give  us  the  bright,  cheery  soul,  who 
is  a  tonic,  on  the  stage  and  off.  Let  us  leave 
the  theatre  ^'feeling  good" — at  one  with  all 
our  fellow-beings. 

Lovable  characters  make  a  play  lovable ;  per- 
fection is  unlovable.  The  little  everyday  fail- 
ings of  humanity  are  lovable  if  they  are  sown 
'in  good  soil.  Let  us  laugh  both  at  and  with 
the  characters  of  a  play,  but  do  not  ask  us  to 
admire  the  cleverness  of  the  author  when  we 
should  be  all-absorbed  in  his  creations !  I  have 
read  so  many  plays  which  seem  to  be  crying 
out  on  every  page  for  adulation.  This  is 
wrong:  a  play  should  seem  to  write  itself,  and 
the  more  really  alive  the  characters  are  the  less 
impression  we  should  receive  that  the  author 
has  been  consciously  trying  to  make  them  so. , 
Choose  homely  types  and  let  them  speak  for 
themselves.  Let  us  have  around  us  the  men 
and  women  whom  we  know,  so  that  our  friends 
seem  to  have  stepped  on  the  stage  for  our  de- 
light. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  ART  OF  WEITING  CHAEACTEBISTIC  AND  TELLING 

LINES 

This  chapter  follows  naturally  from  the  last, 
because  however  polished,  however  witty,  dia- 
logue may  be,  unless  it  is  characteristic  it  is 
not  alive.  The  play  that  is  built-up  of  witty 
lines  is  so  amusing  to  read  that  the  judgment 
even  of  an  expert  on  stage  matters  may  some- 
times be  thrown  out  by  it.  When  seen  in  re- 
hearsal such  a  play  is  found  to  be  lifeless. 
Where  the  stage  is  concerned,  no  substitute  can 
ever  really  take  the  place  of  human  nature. 

Moreover,  there  is  a  monotony  of  wit,  which 
becomes  in  time  as  tiring  as  a  monotony  of 
dullness.  If  every  line  scintillates  with  wordy 
fireworks  the  strain  upon  the  audience  will  be 
serious.  It  was  one  of  the  late  James  Welch's 
favourite  axioms  that  successful  farce  reduced 
itself  to  a  study  of  breaths !  Unless  you  allow 
an  audience  breathing  space  between  the  laughs, 
that  they  may  recover  from  the  first  before 
they  start  laughing  again,  they  will  become  ex- 
hausted, and  instead  of  leaving  the  theatre  with 

50 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     51 

a  sense  of  enjoyment  will  have  upon  them  the 
depression  of  reaction.  The  young  author,  if 
he  is  wittily  inclined,  will  make  the  mistake  of 
giving  his  audience  too  many  good  things. 
The  brain  tires;  and  nothing  is  really  appre- 
ciated unless  it  is  presented  with  a  due  regard 
for  contrast  and  variety. 

One  of  the  most  usual  faults  in  the  dialogue 
of  an  inexperienced  writer  is  that  any  one  of 
his  speeches  might  be  spoken  by  any  one  of 
the  characters :  they  all  seem  to  think  and  talk 
in  the  same  way.  Now  it  may  be  true  that  in 
the  various  social  strata  there  is  an  average 
mode  of  speech,  but,  on  consideration,  we  find 
that  this  is  more  apparent  than  real.  We  may 
think  and  speak  alike  with  regard  to  the  com- 
monplaces of  life ;  but  when  anything  happens 
that  is  a  little  out  of  the  way  temperament  im- 
mediately comes  to  the  fore  and  our  speech  is 
coloured  by  our  point  of  view.  On  the  stage, 
where  insignificant  trifles  are  crowded  out  by 
the  exigencies  of  time  and  action,  this  differen- 
tiation must  always  be  to  the  fore.  We  have 
no  time  to  make  mistakes  in  the  course  of  a 
modern  play,  and  the  duller  side  of  life  must 
give  place  to  the  dramatic  moment.  Monotony, 
even  though  it  may  take  the  form  of  wit,  is 
stultifying  to  the  action  of  the  play :  it  calls  off 


52     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

the  attention  of  the  audience  and  fixes  it  on  the 
word  rather  than  on  the  fact. 

One  of  the  first  things  a  dramatist  has  to 
learn  when  studying  stage  technique  is  to  avoid 
every  temptation  to  digress,  even  though  the 
digression  be  brilliant,  for  the  whole  art  of 
riveting  the  attention  of  an  audience  lies  in  the 
steady  building-up  of  the  main  idea,  and  any 
herring  across  the  trail  will  disturb  the  atten- 
tion and  shatter  the  illusion.  Ruthlessly  sac- 
rifice anything  and  everything  that  distracts 
from  the  vital  point. 

Verbosity,  of  course,  is  a  deadly  sin.  We 
often  refer  to  what  we  call  the  three-line  limit 
for  speeches,  although,  of  course,  we  do  not 
keep  strictly  to  this.  All  rules  are  made  to  be 
broken,  but  it  is,  nevertheless,  as  well  to  re- 
member that  three  lines  of  type-written  script 
are  a  suflBcient  length  for  any  but  a  most  im- 
portant speech  upon  the  stage.  If  a  manager 
opening  a  manscript  can  see  at  a  glance  that 
the  dialogue  is  written  in  short,  crisp  sentences, 
he  will  incline  to  consider  the  play;  but  if  he 
sees  great  blocks  of  speeches,  chunks  of  type- 
written stuff  doled  out  to  each  of  the  charac- 
ters, he  will  certainly  never  take  the  trouble 
to  read  the  play  because  he  will  know  at  once 
that  it  is  hopeless.    Nothing  is  more  monoto- 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     53 

nous  than  a  number  of  long  speeches  condemn- 
ing the  other  actors  to  stand  round  and  *4ook 
silly'*;  all  the  art  in  the  world  will  not  give  a 
natural  appearance  to  a  stage  on  which  one 
character  speaks  at  an  inordinate  length  and 
the  others  listen  an  inordinate  time.  We  all 
know  that  this  would  be  very  dull  in  real  life 
where  we  have  all  suffered  from  the  verbose 
bore  and  have  longed  to  interrupt  and  have 
our  own  way.  We  are  certainly  not  going  to 
pay  money  to  experience  the  same  in  a  theatre ! 

I  have  often  marvelled  at  quarrel  scenes 
upon  the  stage,  where  each  character  sets  forth 
his  point  of  view  in  a  flow  of  rhetoric  to  which 
the  other  persons  in  the  quarrel  listen  atten- 
tively, waiting  until  the  first  has  finished  be- 
fore starting  off  on  their  own.  Now,  my  ex- 
perience of  a  quarrel  in  real  life  is  that  every- 
body talks  at  once — and  the  loudest  wins ! 

If  it  is  absolutely  necessary  for  one  character 
to  give  an  account  which  is  bound  to  occupy  a 
certain  number  of  words,  ingenuity  on  the  part 
of  the  author  will  enable  him  to  break  up  what 
would  otherwise  be  a  long  speech,  by  means  of 
interruptions  and  questions  from  the  other 
characters  on  the  stage.  I  have  known  authors 
who  know  how  this  can  be  done,  and  who  yet 
have  written  their  play  with  the  long  speeches 


54     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

unbroken,  and  have  asked  me  to  show  it  in  that 
form  to  managers,  saying,  ^*But  surely  they 
know  it  can  be  broken  upT^  I  have  always  re- 
fused, because  it  is  obviously  absurd  to  ask  a 
busy  manager  to  waste  his  time  reading  a  play 
which  even  the  author  admits  is  not  in  shape. 

Many  authors,  for  the  sake  of  saving  them- 
selves a  little  trouble,  spoil  their  own  chances 
by  sending  up  plays  in  an  imperfect  form.  If 
the  manager  can  be  induced  to  read  them  he 
cannot  accept  them  like  that  and  so  returns 
them,  and  all  that  happens  is  that  the  author 
has  to  take  the  trouble  in  the  end,  and  when  he 
again  sends  up  his  play  in  a  revised  version  the 
manager  finds  it  dull.  Having  read  it  before  it 
has  no  longer  the  charm  of  novelty.  Both  in 
regard  to  long  speeches,  and  in  other  ways,  an 
author  will  frequently  ask  me  to  show  an  im- 
perfect play  to  a  manager,  saying  that  if  he  is 
interested  in  it  he  (the  author)  will  then  take 
the  trouble  to  get  it  into  shape.  In  other 
words,  he  is  saying  in  his  mind  to  that  man- 
ager— who  is  probably  one  of  the  busiest  men 
on  earth — ** Waste  your  time;  I  can't  bother  to 
waste  mine.'' 

Short,  crisp  sentences  are  always  better  for 
the  stage,  because  they  are  the  speech  of  every- 
day life.    I  constantly  deplore  the  lack  of  style, 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     55 

and  even  grammar,  in  the  modern  novel;  but 
colloquialism  is  more  than  a  virtue ;  it  is  essen- 
tial in  the  modern  play.  Be  as  slangy  as  you 
please;  be  as  incorrect  in  grammar  as  you 
please;  be  natural;  always  write  ^* shan't,'' 
never  *' shall  not";  write,  in  short,  as  people 
speak,  and  above  all,  let  the  character  speak 
characteristically. 

In  the  old  days  much  use  was  made  of  cer- 
tain catch  phrases  technicaly  called  **gags." 
The  humorous  part  in  a  well-known  farce  was 
always  exclaiming,  '^Oh!  arn't  we  having  a 
time,"  and  other  wheezes  of  a  similar  nature 
were  caught  up  by  the  audiences  of  those  days 
and  quoted  with  as  much  enjoyment  as  the  air 
of  a  popular  number  from  a  musical  comedy 
will  now  be  caught  up  and  whistled.  This 
method  has  gone  out  because  we  feel  it  un- 
natural, but,  for  all  that,  if  we  study  the  people 
we  know,  we  shall  find  that  practicaly  every- 
one has  certain  words  or  phrases  which  they 
use  habitually  in  preference  to  others.  If  more 
study  were  given  to  this  matter  we  should  find 
our  friends'  speech  to  be  really  much  more 
characteristic  of  them  than  we  were  inclined  to 
think,  and  if  these  characteristic  turns  of 
phrase  were  slightly  accentuated  for  stage  use, 
in  the  same  way  as  stage  ** make-up"  accen- 


56     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

tuates  the  actors'  features,  we  should  find  that 
we  could  write  very  characteristic  dialogue 
without  any  descent  from  the  canons  of  art. 
Authors  too  often  start  with  the  idea  that  to 
write  effective  characters  for  the  stage  they 
have  got  to  use  grotesque  exaggeration.  This 
is  not  the  case  at  all.  All  they  really  have  to 
do  is  to  keep  their  point  of  view  clearly  before 
the  eyes  of  the  audience.  In  other  words,  their 
intention  in  writing  that  character  must  be 
emphasised  again  and  again,  and  the  charac- 
teristic phrase  repeated  perhaps  more  often 
than  would  actually  occur  in  real  life. 

But  there  is  no  need  to  draw  the  character 
on  lines  outside  nature.  A  play  is  really  a  con- 
centrated presentment  of  some  episode,  and  in 
writing  that  play  one  deliberately  eliminates  all 
that  does  not  concern  that  episode.  It  is  this 
process  of  elimination  in  the  shaping  of  the 
plot  which  should  also  be  the  ruling  factor  in 
the  wording  of  the  dialogue.  By  crowding  out 
the  superfluous  and  retaining  only  the  essen- 
tials one  necessarily  gets  an  effect  of  concen- 
tration which  brings  out  the  salient  points  of 
the  dialogue,  and  shows  them  thrown  up  in  high 
relief  because  stripped  of  superfluous  matter. 
Therefore,  it  follows  that  all  the  characters  say 
would  be  essentially  characteristic  of  them,  be- 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     57 

cause  they  are  being  shown  at  their  most  char- 
acteristic moment.  Dialogue  that  is  inter- 
larded with  a  great  deal  of  superfluous  matter 
is  wearisome  on  the  stage:  it  is  a  mere  waste 
of  time  to  listen  to  it. 

I  am  always  fighting  the  author  who  thinks 
that  effective  writing  is  ^^mere  melodrama!" 
He  tells  me  that  his  play,  which  is  not  dramatic 
in  any  sense  of  the  word,  is  *^a  bit  of  real  life.'' 
All  I  can  say  is  that  I  am  very  sorry  for  those 
mortals  whose  lives  are  as  dull  as  that  play! 
Mine  isn't:  I  shouldn't  let  it  be.  Life  is  not 
dull.  Even  if  duty  compels  us  to  put  up  with  a 
humdrum  existence,  whether  that  humdrum  ex- 
istence is  dull  or  not  depends  upon  ourselves. 
Life  is  as  we  see  it.  The  author  who  sees  life 
as  dull  is  himself  a  dull  dog. 

There  is  an  enormous  difference  between  the 
relative  values  of  the  written  and  the  spoken 
line.  No  line  will  speak  well  unless  its  acoustic 
qualities  are  good  and  unless  its  construction 
allows  the  speaker  to  take  breath  at  the  right 
moment.  Certain  vowels  and  consonants  carry 
better  than  others,  and  the  choice  of  names  to 
be  spoken  on  the  stage  should  be  guided  by  a 
little  consideration  of  their  acoustic  value.  I 
have  often  had  my  attention  distracted  from 
the  story  of  a  play  by  the  worrying  inability 


58     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

to  hear  clearly  a  certain  name  which  various 
members  of  the  cast  seemed  to  pronounce  dif- 
ferently. I  am  not  referring  merely  to  names 
which  are  pronounced  differently  by  various 
members  of  the  cast,  because  this  is  an  error 
due  to  carelessness  on  the  part  of  the  producer 
w^hich,  to  my  mind,  is  entirely  inexcusable ;  but 
there  are  certain  words  the  acoustic  qualities 
of  which  are  so  imperfect  that  they  carry  with 
different  effect  when  spoken  by  different  voices. 
If  it  is  necessary  for  a  name  to  be  spoken  often 
in  a  play  I  should  advise  the  author  himself  to 
test  the  carrying  qualities  of  that  name  by 
going  to  various  parts  of  the  house  during  re- 
hearsal, and  if  he  finds  that  there  is  any  doubt, 
changing  the  name  for  another  that  will  better 
stand  the  test. 

For  the  same  reason,  as  he  hears  his  lines 
spoken  on  the  stage  he  will  aid  the  producer  to 
change  the  wording  of  any  sentence  with  a  view 
to  a  greater  acoustic  value.  Music  is  all-im- 
portant in  the  wording  of  a  play:  I  mean,  of 
course,  the  music  of  the  spoken  voice  and  the 
blending  of  the  word-tones.  Here,  as  in  every- 
thing else,  monotony  must  be  avoided ;  even  the 
monotony  of  music!  Discord  is  a  necessary 
foil,  and  dialogue  that  is  too  smoothly  written 
becomes  lethargic.    The  art  of  effective  dia- 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     59 

logue  is  very  largely  the  art  of  effective  sound 
— sound  which  is  the  vehicle  of  sense  and  its 
interpreter. 

Keep  your  emphatic  words  for  the  end  of 
your  sentence,  and  do  not  make  those  sentences 
too  long-winded  or  the  actor's  breath  will  fail 
him  just  when  he  needs  it  to  make  his  point. 
Some  ten  years  ago  complaint  was  made 
against  the  actors  of  the  time  that  they  dropped 
their  voices  at  the  end  of  every  sentence,  swal- 
lowing their  last  few  words.  I  believe  myself 
that  this  was  partly  the  fault  of  the  dramatists, 
who,  at  that  period,  were  writing  three- 
barrelled  sentences  of  involved  structure, 
which  were  exhausting  to  speak  and  which  did 
not  allow  of  any  lifted  inflection  towards  the 
end.  When  dramatists  write  crisply  they  get 
their  lines  crisply  delivered:  when  dramatists 
write  effective  scenes  they  get  effective  acting. 
If  we  look  back  along  the  history  of  the  drama 
we  shall  find  that  great  acting  dies  off  our 
stage  when  great  scenes  cease  to  appear  in  our 
plays.  When  the  talky-talky  play  comes  in, 
the  actor  of  talent  makes  way  for  the  drawing- 
room  puppet. 

Anyone  who  has  translated  from  the  French 
knows  that  to  translate  literally  means  that 
the  English  sense  will  drown  itself  in  words. 


60     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

To  get  the  spirit  of  the  original  it  is  better  to 
translate  crisply  and  liberally.  Yet,  how  dra- 
matically Frenchmen  speak,  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  they  are  using  six  words  to  our  one.  They 
economise  emphasis  with  the  result  that,  when 
the  keyword  shoots  out,  it  rings  like  a  pistol 
shot.  But  we,  in  England,  speak  with  a  barrel- 
organ  grind ;  we  seem  to  be  bumping  on  far  too 
many  words  because  our  speech  is  so  much 
slower;  our  tongues  have  not  the  knack  of  trip- 
ping. For  this  reason  it  is  the  more  necessary 
for  a  dramatist  to  word  his  sentences  with  care. 
Don't  give  the  actor  too  much  to  say,  but  be 
sure  that  what  he  says  has  point.  A  dull  pas- 
sage in  English  is  infinitely  more  serious  than 
a  dull  passage  in  French,  because  it  takes  so 
much  longer  to  deliver. 

Pace  is  a  vital  point  where  acting  is  con- 
cerned, and  the  fate  of  a  play  will  often  depend 
on  the  pace  at  which  it  is  played ;  especially  the 
pace  at  which  its  lines  are  spoken.  I  remember 
seeing  an  adaptation  of  a  French  farce  played 
over  here  by  English  comedians  unused  to 
farce  pace.  Of  all  mistakes  to  make  in  cast- 
ing it  is  perhaps  the  worst  to  put  a  comedian 
into  farce  or  a  farcical  actor  into  comedy.  Ex- 
tremes meet,  and  a  great  farce  actor  will  often 
be  a  great  tragedian,  because  farce  is  played 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     61 

quickly  and  the  tension  of  a  dramatic  moment 
often  requires  an  acceleration  of  speed.  But 
comedy  is  more  leisurely,  and  that  leisurely 
habit  once  acquired  is  difficult  to  cast  off. 

Now  this  question  of  pace  vitally  concerns 
the  wording  of  a  play.  In  comedy  one  can  af- 
ford oneself  more  rounded  sentences;  but 
where  pace  is  a  sine  qua  non  no  stumbling- 
block  must  be  put  in  the  speaker's  mouth. 
The  words  must  be  carefully  chosen  to  rattle 
and  rap  at  will. 

It  is  as  essential  that  the  climax  of  the  sen- 
tence should  come  towards  its  end  as  it  is  that 
the  climax  of  an  act  should  be  its  curtain.  As 
each  act  should  be  built  to  rouse  expectancy  in 
the  minds  of  the  audience,  so  each  sentence 
should  be  built  to  carry  on  tension  to  the  next. 
If  speeches  tail  off  into  unimportant  words 
there  will  be  a  perceptible  break  of  the  tension 
before  the  next  speech  commences. 

We  have  two  characteristic  phrases  which  we 
use  of  acting  and  of  writing:  we  say  that  such 
and  such  an  actor  or  such  and  such  a  speech 
*4ets  a  scene  down,''  whereas  another  speech 
or  actor  *  Spicks  it  up  again."  If,  in  a  duologue 
scene,  one  of  the  actors  is  inferior  to  the  other, 
he  will  keep  ^* letting  it  down,"  and  will  make 
the  task  of  the  other  actor  doubly  difficult  be- 


62     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

cause  he  has  given  him  nothing  to  play  to.  It 
is  like  a  game  of  ball  between  two  players, 
where  one  is  perpetually  dropping  the  ball  and 
obliging  the  other  to  pick  it  up  and  start  again. 
The  success  of  every  scene  depends  on  sus- 
tained tension,  and  the  illusion  is  bound  to  suf- 
fer if  any  mistake  on  the  part  of  either  actors 
or  author  lets  that  tension  do^Ti.  It  is  all  a 
question  of  sustaining.  If  then  the  author 
writes  his  dialogue  in  sentences  so  constructed 
that  each  one  comes  to  an  end  in  a  tail  of  unim- 
portant words,  it  is  practically  impossible  to 
sustain  the  tension.  Keep  your  big  words  for 
the  end  of  your  sentence,  and  put  your  filling- 
up  words  earlier,  cutting  them  ruthlessly  down 
to  the  least  possible.  When  Flaubert  was 
training  de  Maupassant  to  write,  he  set  him  a 
theme  each  day.  The  next  day  de  Maupassant 
would  bring  him  his  written  version  of  this 
theme.  Flaubert  would  read  it  through  and 
say,  *'Very  good;  now  go  back  and  cut  out 
every  unnecessary  word.''  That  should  be  the 
golden  rule  of  the  dramatist. 


CHAPTER  VI 

prepaeation:  motives  and  plausibility: 
entrances  and  exits 

Preparation  is  our  word  for  those  intricate 
details  of  stage  technique  which  tend  to  make 
a  play  easier  to  follow.  They  are  in  them- 
selves very  subtle,  yet  their  effect  is  to  make 
the  writing  clear,  to  suggest  the  right  impres- 
sions to  the  minds  of  the  audience,  and  ease 
them  of  all  need  of  puzzling  out  the  author's 
intention  for  themselves. 

Everything  depends  upon  suggestion:  every 
branch  of  art  and  science  now  recognises  its 
power.  If  one  can  suggest  to  the  audience  the 
type  of  character  one  is  setting  before  them 
one  will  have  no  trouble  in  explaining  motives ; 
explanation  will  be  almost  superfluous,  as  the 
psychology  of  the  character  will  carry  in  itself 
its  own  excuse.  When  writing  a  play  one  has 
got  to  accomplish  the  seeming  impossibility  of 
explaining  everything  without  explanation. 
To  have  to  listen  to  an  explanation  is  very  tedi- 
ous, yet  every  detail  of  a  play  must  be  both 
plausible  and  clear.    How  to  accomplish  this  is 

63 


64     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

the  crux  of  the  whole  matter,  and  suggestion 
the  answer  to  the  problem.  If  the  right  im- 
pression is  produced,  the  minds  of  the  audi- 
ence will  leap  to  the  explanation,  but  in  pro- 
ducing this  impression  every  detail  of  the  stage 
must  blend.  Atmosphere  is  everything:  it  can 
be  created  by  the  very  set  of  the  scene  before 
ever  a  word  is  spoken.  Some  specially  chosen 
ornament  upon  the  stage  will  strike  a  cord  in 
the  imaginations  of  the  audience  which  after- 
wards will  complete  the  harmony  of  the  whole 
play.  Such  a  point  as  this  may  be  called  prep- 
aration, since  it  serves  to  prepare  the  onlooker 
for  something  which  is  afterwards  to  come  to 
light.  For  instance,  if  it  were  essential  in  the 
plot  of  a  play  that  the  owner  of  the  room  in 
w^hich  the  action  takes  place  had  relations  in 
China,  the  presence  of  some  unusual  china 
bowl,  although  it  might  never  be  referred  to, 
would  yet  have  sounded  in  the  minds  of  the  au- 
dience the  suggestion  of  China,  which  would 
afterwards  serve  to  prepare  the  revelation. 

The  whole  art  of  preparation  is  to  make  us 
ready  to  receive  as  probable  the  intelligence 
that  the  author  later  in  the  play  wishes  to  put 
before  us  as  a  surprise.  I  have  said  before 
that  on  the  modern  stage  surprise  is  the  sine 
qua  non:  we  must  have  something  unexpected 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     65 

in  every  successful  play.  "We  are  all  too  so- 
phisticated to  be  entertained  any  longer  by  the 
obvious;  but  surprise  is  relative,  and  if  the 
technique  of  a  play  is  amateurish  would  be  apt 
merely  to  awaken  an  irritating  incredulity. 

The  greater  and  more  effective  a  surprise  is 
to  be,  the  more  carefully  must  that  surprise  be 
prepared.  No  hint  must  be  given  of  its  com- 
ing ;  yet  when  it  comes,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
it  is  entirely  unanticipated,  we  must  say,  **0f 
course!'*  It  must  seem  to  us  the  right  thing, 
if  not  we  shall  feel  that  the  whole  play  is 
wrong. 

I  have  here  tried  to  define  preparation  in  its 
broadest  sense.  Not  only  the  big  surprise  of  a 
play  needs  to  be  prepared,  but  every  detail 
which  is  to  arrest  attention.  If  the  author  will 
bear  in  mind  that  the  purpose  of  preparation  is 
to  explain  without  explaining,  to  make  clear 
without  tedious  narrative,  he  will  see  how  vital 
it  is.  For  instance,  if  the  personality  of  his 
central  figure  is  to  grip  the  audience,  they  must 
be  led  to  imagine  that  that  personality  is  ar- 
resting. Of  course  this  impression  cannot  be 
sustained  unless  the  character  is  well  drawn, 
but  half  the  battle  will  be  won  if  the  audience 
is  ready  to  take  an  interest  in  him  before  he 
appears.     The  preparation  of  a  principal  char- 


66     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

acter,  therefore,  lies  in  the  art  of  having  the 
other  characters  talk  about  him  just  enough 
to  excite  interest,  so  that  when  he  actually 
comes  on  the  stage  we  shall  be  curious  to  see 
him,  and  our  attention  will  fix  itself  willingly 
upon  him.  If  his  first  entrance  is  of  an  effec- 
tive nature  he  will  at  once  set  our  imagination 
working,  and  we  shall  follow  all  he  does  with 
expectancy. 

Not  only  have  characters  to  be  prepared; 
events  and  facts  must  also  have  their  due  prep- 
aration. *^  Coming  events  cast  their  shadows 
before,''  and  the  shadows  of  the  coming  events 
in  a  well-written  play  must  be  very  delicately 
cast  by  the  figures  which  precede  them.  Shock 
is  unpleasant;  it  is  more  than  unpleasant,  it  is 
dangerous;  and  the  fine  susceptibilities  of  an 
audience  must  never  be  submitted  to  it.  The 
more  effective  a  surprise  is  to  be  the  more  con- 
vincing it  must  be,  and  to  make  it  convincing, 
infinite  trouble  must  be  taken  to  handle  the  pre- 
ceding scenes  of  the  play  so  that  delicate  hints 
shall  have  been  given  which  have  conveyed  just 
enough  and  not  too  much. 

We  have  said  before  that  the  plot  of  a  play 
must  proceed  from  the  character  writing. 
The  germ  of  motive,  of  course,  is  contained  in 
the  character  writing,  and  if  that  is  clear  the 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     67 

motive  for  the  actions  of  the  characters  must 
of  necessity  be  clear.  Little  things  show  char- 
acter, and  without  diverging  from  the  main 
plot  it  is  often  possible  to  throw  sidelights 
which  are  very  illuminating.  Even  the  choice 
of  a  cake  in  a  tea  scene  can  be  used  to  portray 
character,  and  without  delaying  the  progress 
of  the  dialogue.  For  instance,  suppose  the 
main  theme  of  a  play  depended  upon  the  attrac- 
tion of  a  very  brilliant  man  for  a  certain 
woman,  and  that  the  climax  turned  on  her  dis- 
covering, just  at  the  last  moment,  that  in  spite 
of  his  magnetic  personality  he  was  selfish  in 
grain.  It  would  spoil  the  whole  play  if  this 
selfishness  were  given  away  too  soon,  yet,  it 
might  be  suggested  subtly.  Early  in  the  play 
there  might  be  a  drawing  room  scene;  tea  is 
being  served;  the  man  is  talking  gaily  to  the 
heroine;  another  woman  brings  him  a  dish  of 
cakes  over  which,  while  still  talking,  his  fingers 
hover  uncertainly.  He  is  about  to  choose  one, 
sees  another  which  he  likes  better,  hesitates, 
and  finally  helps  himself  to  the  best  of  the  lot, 
taking  so  long  about  it  that  the  girl  holding 
the  dish  shows  faintly,  but  unmistakably,  that 
she  is  getting  tired.  This  little  bit  of  business 
would  not  in  any  way  interrupt  the  progress  of 
the  play  as  the  dialogue  would  be  going  on  all 


68     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

the  time,  yet  it  would  leave  a  very  distinct  im- 
pression on  the  minds  of  the  audience  that, 
where  his  personal  satisfactions  were  con- 
cerned, that  man  was  regardless  of  the  com- 
fort of  others.  This  incident,  combined  with 
the  man's  brilliant  talk,  would  give  us  an  im- 
mediate snapshot  of  his  character.  After  this, 
if  the  author  wished,  he  might  safely  bring  out 
all  the  fascinations  of  the  man,  sure  that,  when 
the  big  surprise  of  the  play  turned  on  his  in- 
nate selfishness,  the  audience  would  be  pre- 
pared to  accept  that  selfishness  as  credible. 
Where  plausibility  is  concerned  it  is  trifles  that 
count. 

The  relationship  of  the  various  characters  to 
one  another  and  their  social  status  can  be  in- 
dicated without  verbal  explanation  by  means 
of  similar  devices  of  preparation :  this  is  essen- 
tially a  matter  in  which  ingenuity  tells. 

Entrances  and  Exits  are  a  great  stumbling- 
block  to  the  beginner  who  does  not  know  how  to 
get  his  characters  on  and  off  the  stage,  and 
often  leaves  it  very  apparent  that  he  has  taken 
them  off  simply  for  the  sake  of  getting  them  off 
or  brought  them  on  simply  for  the  sake  of 
bringing  them  on!  I  remember  one  play  in 
which  the  author  wanted  to  get  rid  of  the 
heroine's  mother  because  he  wished  to  have  a 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLATWRITING     69 

love  scene  between  her  daughter  and  the  young 
man.  I  said  to  him,  ^  ^  How  are  you  going  to  do 
itr'  to  which  he  replied,  *^0h!  that  is  easy 
enough,"  so  he  made  her  say,  **I  think  I  hear 
the  milkman,''  and  depart.  As  she  was  sup- 
posed to  be  a  woman  in  a  good  social  position 
this  did  not  seem  quite  so  convincing  to  me  as  it 
did  to  him. 

There  must  always  be  a  reason  for  every- 
thing on  the  stage,  whether  that  reason  is  set 
down  in  words  or  not.  Characters  that  wander 
aimlessly  on  and  off  get  on  one's  nerves;  they 
convey  at  once  a  sense  of  restlessness  which  is 
infectious,  and  the  audience  begins  to  fidget. 
An  author  can  never  afford  to  forget  the  power 
of  illusion  over  his  audience.  So  real  are  the 
happenings  on  the  stage  to  some  of  us  that 
even  the  most  intelligent  will  be  carried  out  of 
themselves  while  the  spell  is  on  them.  My  fa- 
ther, a  hardened  playgoer  of  an  essentially 
mathematical  and  argumentative  brain,  hated 
draughts.  When  a  door  was  left  open  on  a 
stage  I  have  seen  him,  seated  in  the  circle,  put 
up  his  coat-collar. 

Now  this  quality  of  faith  is  very  precious ;  it 
is  the  greatest  tribute  an  author  can  receive, 
but  if  he  underrates  it  he  deserves  to  fail.  The 
trouble  is  to  get  him  to  understand  that  he  is 


70    PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

underrating  it  when  he  puts  too  great  a  strain 
on  it.  To  expect  an  audience  to  swallow  the 
absolutely  incredible  is  to  treat  it  with  con- 
tempt. It  will  follow  you  through  thick  and 
thin  provided  only  that  you  preserve  a  sense 
of  proportion.  Build  on  any  lines  you  like,  but 
build  harmoniously.  Don't  topple  us  do^vn 
from  the  castle  of  dreams  to  the  make-shift 
carelessness  of  a  mud  cabin. 

I  can  forgive  want  of  talent — that  is  not  the 
author's  fault;  I  can  forgive  want  of  knowledge 
— that  with  opportunity  can  be  acquired — but 
I  cannot  forgive  carelessness,  and  I  know  by  a 
long  experience  that  it  is  far  too  common  a 
fault  of  would-be  dramatic  authors.  They  are 
obsessed  by  the  idea  that  a  play  being  short  in 
length  should  give  them  little  trouble  to  write, 
and  that  fortune  comes  easily  to  the  dramatist. 
But  the  difficulty  of  literary  effort  is  not  a 
question  of  length,  it  is  a  question  of  technique ; 
and  the  technique  of  playwriting  is  a  study  in 
itself.  It  can  be  learnt — my  last  three  years 
of  work  with  my  School  for  Dramatists  has 
proved  that — but  it  can  only  be  learnt  with  time 
and  trouble,  and  the  author  who  expects  to  suc- 
ceed ** first  go  off"  is  the  author  who  does  not 
deserve  to  succeed  at  all. 

The  tremendous  gain  that  accrues  to  the  au- 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     71 

thor  of  one  successful  play  has  given  many 
people  the  impression  that  writing  plays  is  a 
fairy-tale  task  at  which  the  deserving  are  sure 
to  succeed.  I  do  not  deny  this;  on  the  con- 
trary, I  think  the  deserving  do  succeed ;  we  dif- 
fer simply  in  our  definition  of  the  word  *'  de- 
serve.^ ^  What  is  worth  having  is  worth  pay- 
ing for,  and  for  my  part  I  have  no  use  for  the 
temperament  that  is  not  prepared  to  pay  for 
success  with  years  and  years  of  effort. 

I  have  often  found  that  some  of  the  trouble 
with  regard  to  Entrances  and  Exits  can  be 
smoothed  over  by  a  readjustment  of  the  order 
of  scenes.  I  am  continually  being  reminded  of 
Hans' Andersen's  parable  about  the  princess 
who  came  one  wet  night  to  the  door  of  a  king- 
dom and  begged  the  queen  mother  to  let  her 
in.  She  said  that  she  was  a  real  princess. 
The  queen  mother,  however,  had  her  doubts, 
and  put  her  on  a  bed  of  twenty  mattresses  and 
twenty  eiderdowns,  and  underneath  the  twenty 
mattresses  and  twenty  eiderdowns  she  placed 
one  small  bean.  Next  morning  she  asked  the 
princess  how  she  had  slept.  ^'Horribly,''  said 
the  princess,  ^^I  am  simply  black  and  blue! 
What  was  the  matter  with  that  bed?''  Then 
the  queen  mother  knew  that  underneath  the 
twenty  mattresses  and  twenty  eiderdowns  she 


72     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

had  yet  detected  the  presence  of  the  bean,  and 
therefore  she  must  be,  without  doubt,  a  reaZ 
princess.  When  I  was  a  child  they  used  to  call 
me  ^'the  princess  on  the  bean,''  and  that  is  ex- 
actly what  an  audience  is.  It  will  detect  the 
presence  of  the  bean  and  feel  that  it  is  black 
and  blue  all  over,  although  it  will  never  know 
why.  Yet  my  experience  as  **Play  Doctor'' 
teaches  me  that  very  often  when  a  play  is 
wrong  the  thing  that  jars  is  but  a  trifle,  and, 
once  detected,  can  easily  be  removed.  The 
trouble  is  to  detect  it — it  is  so  smothered  in 
those  eiderdo^vns.  An  unconvincing  reason 
for  the  coming  on  and  going  off  of  the  charac- 
ters will  make  quite  a  big  bean  and  give  an 
air  of  jerky  improbability  to  the  whole  play 
which  is  annoying.  Yet  it  is  really  easy  to  in- 
vent reasons  for  entrances  and  exits  which  can 
be  woven  into  the  progress  of  the  action.  This 
is  one  of  the  many  points  where  taking  trouble 
wins ! 

Owing  to  the  difficulty  of  getting  his  charac- 
ters on  and  off  the  stage  one  of  the  worst  faults 
of  a  young  author  is  usually  a  tendency  to  run 
to  duologue  scenes,  that  is  to  have  only  two 
people  on  the  stage  at  a  time.  This  is  a  bad 
fault,  and,  though  it  is  even  worse  to  have  all 
your  characters  on  talking  alternately  in  pairs, 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     73 

yet  with  a  little  ingenuity  it  would  be  easy  to 
intersperse  the  tete-d-tetes  with  scenes  which 
include  more  characters.  You  can  cut  any  knot 
by  a  little  thought.  The  trouble  involved  in 
writing  a  play  is  not  the  actual  writing  but  the 
ingenuity  required  to  get  every  detail  smooth. 
To  my  mind,  there  is  a  fascination  in  this ;  it  is 
like  solving  a  very  interesting  puzzle,  and  I  am 
much  inclined  to  hold  the  view  that,  given  a  suf- 
ficient plot,  there  is  no  difficulty  in  the  writing 
of  a  play  which  time  and  trouble  cannot  over- 
come. 

With  regard  to  the  point  at  present  under 
consideration — Entrances  and  Exits — a  little 
extra  care  in  the  choice  of  scene  and  considera- 
tion of  the  occupations  of  the  various  charac- 
ters will  often  solve  it.  Nowadays  an  author 
has  so  wide  a  choice :  he  can  invent  setting  and 
environment  which  will  meet  the  exigencies  of 
his  plot  and  allow  his  characters  an  ample  ex- 
cuse for  all  their  comings  and  goings.  These 
details  must  be  thought  out  before  the  play  is 
written,  and  there  is  usually  more  than  one  al- 
ternative which  will  fit  the  case  and  clear  away 
the  trouble. 

We  are  no  longer  hampered,  as  were  the 
dramatists  of  the  last  century,  by  a  crowd  of 
idle  women  in  our  plays,  for  whose  presence  on 


74     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

the  scene  it  was  hard  to  account  except  under 
conventional  conditions.  The  unemployed  can 
be  as  tiresome  on  the  stage  as  in  real  life,  but 
nowadays,  when  there  is  so  great  a  choice  of 
occupation  for  both  men  and  women,  it  is  easy 
to  select  those  occupations  and  environments 
which  will  give  credulity  to  every  detail  of 
one's  play. 


CHAPTEE  VII 

HUMOUR 

No  play  nowadays  is  complete  without  hu- 
mour. No  point  of  view,  to  my  mind,  can  be 
said  to  contain  breadth  unless  it  embraces  hu- 
mour. The  most  understanding  outlook  on  life 
is  one  of  humorous  sympathy.  As  the  world 
has  grown  older  its  sense  of  humour  has  grown 
with  it :  as  civilisation  strides  forward  our  debt 
to  the  great  humorists  is  more  gratefully  ac- 
knowledged. 

Humour  on  the  stage,  as  indeed  elsewhere,  is 
just  a  question  of  point  of  view.  The  same 
story  can  be  told  with  thunder  clouds  piled 
black  or  with  the  silver  lining  showing  through ; 
and  the  more  humour  is  brought  to  bear  upon  a 
dramatic  situation  the  more  effective  by  con- 
trast is  its  drama.  There  is  humour  not  only 
in  situation  but  even  in  the  ugliest  characteris- 
tics of  human  nature  when  those  characteristics 
are  seen  in  the  light  of  a  playful  fancy.  Hu- 
mour is  the  limelight  of  life,  and,  in  its  rays, 
much  that  before  seemed  dingy  and  common- 

75 


76     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

place  becomes  ethereal.  Even  selfishness  may 
raise  a  smile. 

Not  long  ago  I  was  going  to  have  a  serious 
operation — in  fact,  three  operations  in  one — 
and  I  was  told  to  make  my  will  and  set  my  af- 
fairs in  order.  There  is  a  certain  Bore  of  my 
acquaintance  who  visits  me  periodically,  grum- 
bles at  everything  and  everybody,  and  tries  to 
wring  from  me  a  promise  to  make  every  man- 
ager whom  I  happen  to  know  by  her  plays. 
Well,  she  wanted  to  see  me  on  this  particular 
morning:  she  informed  my  secretary  that  she 
must  see  me,  although  the  latter  endeavoured 
to  explain  matters  and  entreated  her  to  stay 
away.  ^^ Don't  you  understand,''  said  my  sec- 
retary, ^^that  Miss  Piatt  has  to  go  into  the 
hospital  to-night  and  has,  therefore,  only  this 
morning  to  get  everything  in  order?  It  is  a 
most  serious  operation — literally  a  matter  of 
life  and  death."  *^Well,"  replied  the  Bore,  ^'I 
am  in  the  dentist 's  hands ! ' '  Now  I  think  that 
story  is  very  funny. 

It  is  a  mistake  in  a  modem  play  to  think  that 
humour  must  be  confined  exclusively  to  certain 
characters  and  scenes  introduced  for  the  pur- 
pose of  humorous  relief.  In  the  very  old  days, 
when  comedy  and  tragedy  were  separated  by  an 
impassable  barrier,  this  was  the  way  in  which 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     77 

humour  was  first  allowed  to  creep  into  more 
serious  work;  but  it  is  not  a  method  which 
should  be  imitated  now.  When  we  look  back 
upon  those  old  dramas  we  usually  find  that  the 
comic  relief  in  them  is  out  of  date,  as  humour, 
oddly  enough,  belongs  to  its  age  more  inevit- 
ably than  drama.  Perhaps  it  is  because  it  acts 
as  scavenger,  clearing  away  the  plague  spots 
of  the  world,  and,  therefore,  having  to  serve  its 
purpose  age  by  age,  partakes  of  the  age  it 
serves. 

Humour  must  of  its  very  nature  be  sponta- 
neous: a  laboured  joke  is  no  joke  at  all.  Be- 
cause of  its  spontaneity  humour  is  very  dif- 
ficult to  define,  and  one  shrinks  from  laying 
down  any  hard  and  fast  rules  upon  so  mercurial 
a  theme :  still,  one  may  venture  to  commit  one- 
self thus  far.  Humour,  to  serve  the  purposes 
of  playwriting  at  its  best,  must  have  its  root 
in  the  point  of  view  which  governs  the  whole 
story :  it  must  illuminate  the  theme,  not  merely 
adorn  it.  It  must  be  woven  into  the  character 
drawing,  supplying  that  kindliness  of  judgment 
which  a  purely  serious  outlook  upon  life  finds 
hard  to  yield. 

We  say  that  the  breath  of  ridicule  can  kill 
more  surely  than  poison:  it  stabs  pride  to  the 
heart;  but  in  the  place  of  pride  some  other 


78     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

quality  more  beautiful  should  spring,  sinc^  the 
charm  of  humour  is  that  it  fertilises  but  never 
causes  decay.  On  the  contrary,  it  sweeps  away 
disease  and  abnormality,  spreading  health-giv- 
ing breeze  and  courage.  Humour  is  meat  and 
drink:  though  it  may  strike  down  evil  it  gives 
continually  freshness  and  strength  and  mag- 
netism. Nothing  attracts  like  humour.  The 
old  idea  that  if  you  treat  a  subject  humorously 
you  treat  it  superficially  only  survives  now 
among  the  undeveloped.  The  great  humorists 
of  the  world  have  always  had  the  heart  to  feel ; 
and  when  enthusiasm  is  wdnged  with  humour  it 
comes  to  its  fullest  power. 

I  have  said  in  the  previous  chapter  that  it  is 
a  great  mistake  to  try  to  be  funny  from  begin- 
ning to  end  of  a  play.  Fun,  like  everything 
else,  has  to  be  thro^\m  into  relief  by  contrast, 
and  one  of  the  most  successful  farces  of  modern 
times,  ^'Potash  and  Perlmutter,''  was  built 
upon  a  strongly  dramatic  plot.  Its  humour 
sprang  from  its  character  drawing,  and  Potash 
and  Perlmutter  being  what  they  were,  fun  was 
assured.  There  was  no  need  to  force  the  note ; 
it  was  there  in  the  character  drawing.  There- 
fore the  most  potent  way  of  working  up  hu- 
mour in  a  play  is  to  see  the  humorous  side  of 
the  characters  in  conjunction  with  their  dra- 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     79 

matic  force,  and  u&e  the  one  as  contrast  to  the 
other.  The  unobservant  separate  humour  and 
emotion.  This,  of  course,  is  a  complete  mis- 
take. Humour  is  emotion,  and  in  an  emotional 
mood  one  is  most  prone  to  be  overcome  by  hu- 
mour. We  laugh  more  easily  when  we  are  near 
tears:  we  cry  with  laughing.  Humour  can  be 
the  most  powerful  of  emotions:  it  is  certainly 
one  of  the  greatest  teachers.  Nothing  in  the 
world  opens  our  eyes  like  humour.  It  opens 
the  eyes  of  the  mind  and  it  opens  the  eyes  of 
the  heart :  it  warms  the  blood. 

I  hear  people  of  brains  raging  at  the  revues 
and  other  *  ^piffle''  which,  according  to  them,  so 
constantly  disgrace  our  stage,  and  I  think  to 
myself,  *^You  are  only  reaping  what  you  have 
sown.  For  centuries  past  you  have  turned  up 
your  noses  at  a  good  laugh,  you  intellectuals, 
and  now  you  are  surprised  because  when  the 
world,  aching  from  its  woes,  demands  to  lay 
aside  care  in  the  healing  atmosphere  of  a  bit 
of  fun,  it  finds  too  often  that  the  only  authors 
who  will  condescend  to  joke  are  those  whose  in- 
tellectual standard  is  not  high,  and  therefore  it 
is  obliged  to  take  what  it  can  get!'* 

^^ Piffle''  will  never  be  chased  off  the  stage 
by  any  high-brow  attempt  to  ram  grim  tragedy 
down   the   gaping   mouth   of  the  public.    We 


80     PRACTICAJj  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

must  laugh:  we  have  the  sense  to  know  that 
laughter  is  a  tonic  and  that  the  only  way  in 
which  we  can  gather  strength  to  fight  the  pres- 
ent conditions  of  our  lives  is  to  shrug  the  whole 
weight  off  our  shoulders  whenever  we  can,  and 
just  let  everything  go  in  a  good  old  irresponsi- 
ble shout  of  laughter.  If  the  high-brows  really 
want  to  elevate  the  stage  let  them  set  to  work 
to  write  good  plays  with  a  large  allowance  of 
laughter.  Let  them  see  the  humorous  side  of 
even  the  grimmest  tragedy;  let  them  say,  *^Our 
philosophy  of  "life  is  this,  that  fate  can  never 
kick  us  down  while  we  keep  our  sense  of  hu- 
mour. '  ^ 

Write  good  plays  on  this  theme  and  the  man- 
agers will  say,  ^^  There  is  money  in  these 
plays,"  and  will  only  be  too  eager  to  put  them 
on. 

What  I  want  to  emphasise  and  re-emphasise 
here  is  that  the  stage  is  an  excellent  vehicle  for 
airing  any  point  of  view,  and  that  the  value  of 
humour  in  a  play  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  can  be 
used  to  drive  home  any  healthy  theory  of  life. 
If  the  writers  of  problem  plays  would  only  con- 
sider this  they  would  find  that  they  could  ser\"e 
their  cause  with  infinitely  more  success  by  writ- 
ing marketable  plays  than  by  being  what  we 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLATWRITING     81 

now  term  *  ^high-brow'';  it  is  simply  a  matter 
of  treatment. 

Any  theory  of  life  will  lend  itself  to  humour, 
which,  indeed,  can  be  used  as  a  weapon  both  of 
offence  and  defence.  If  the  stage  is  ever  to  do 
the  work  which  it  ought  to  do ;  if  it  is  ever  to 
make  good  as  an  educational  factor  and  teach 
the  lessons  of  life  from  the  highest  point  of 
view,  that  point  of  view  must  call  to  its  aid  the 
gift  of  humour.  There  was  never  thunder 
without  lightning,  and  humour  is  the  lightning 
of  the  gods  I 

For  far  too  many  centuries  we  have  treated 
this  enormous  force  as  a  mere  buffoon ;  we  have 
had  in  our  hearts  a  sort  of  contempt  for  the 
humorist,  and  separated  him  rigidly  from  the 
thinker.  One  can  cultivate  humorous  thought : 
it  is  a  duty  to  do  so.  To  deprecate  humour  is 
to  show  a  lack  of  appreciation  so  extraordinary 
as  to  be  scarcely  human.  The  gift  of  humour 
is  essentially  the  birthright  of  man,  yet  man 
has  for  centuries  past  esteemed  it  a  mere  ad- 
junct to  his  hours  of  self-indulgence.  Humour- 
is  the  light  that  never  fails :  the  more  we  seek  it 
the  more  we  see. 

^^Miss  Piatt,  can  you  tell  me  how  I  can  be 
funnyf*'    I  am  always  being  asked  this  ques- 


82     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

tion :  I  wish  the  questioner  could  see  how  funny 
it  is !  We  are  all  funny :  the  world  teems  with 
humour;  it  is  only  a  question  of  seeing  it,  seiz- 
ing it,  and  putting  it  into  one's  work. 

Perhaps  the  most  telling  humour  of  all  is 
unconscious  humour,  and  I  never  yet  met  any- 
one so  devoid  of  humour  that  he  could  not  see 
the  ridiculous  side  of  his  friends.  Well,  what 
more  do  you  want  1  Put  it  in  your  play.  You 
walk  along  the  street;  you  see  something  that 
makes  you  smile:  put  it  in  your  play.  Some- 
one you  know  makes  a  particularly  outrageous 
statement  sublimely  funny  in  its  unconscious 
assumption  that  the  world  was  built  for  the 
convenience  of  the  speaker.  Put  it  in  your 
play.  Your  charwoman  beseeches  you  to  come 
and  look  at  the  ^ ^ulster''  on  her  foot:  put  it  in 
your  play.  Your  friend  comes  to  tell  you  that 
his  wife  has  run  away  from  him  and  adds,  ^*T 
had  the  bath  repainted  only  last  week!'*  Any- 
thing and  everything  that  happens  to  yourself 
or  to  your  friends  will  make  a  play,  if  viewed 
from  the  right  outlook,  but  that  outlook  must 
be  one  that  includes  humour.  The  humour 
must  be  in  the  point  of  view,  and,  if  it  is,  it  is 
sure  to  be  effective  on  the  stage  because  it  will 
be  magnetic.    Don't  be  afraid  to  blend  it  even 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     83 

with  your  most  dramatic  moments.  Work  up 
to  the  pitch  of  intensity;  round  off  with  one 
short,  quick  whip-lash  of  humour,  and  your 
curtain  will  come  down  on  a  sure  thing. 


CHAPTEE  VIII 

SITUATIONS,   CURTAINS,   ATMOSPHERE,   AND  DETAIL 

Life  is  built  up  of  situations,  and  it  is  always 
a  marvel  to  me  that  authors  should  find  it  so 
difficult  to  ^ invent''  plots.  I  cannot  see  the 
occasion  to  *  invent'*  anything:  life  is  always 
planking  situations  down  on  our  unfortunate 
heads.  Is  there  any  life  so  empty  of  event 
as  to  be  devoid  of  situations?  Impossible! 
Every  life  must,  at  least,  contain  two — birth 
and  death — and  most  lives  have  one  love  epi- 
sode if  not  more.  Then  there  is  the  great  ad- 
venture of  leaving  the  parent  nest  and  going 
out  into  the  world — that  comes  to  the  majority 
of  us  nowadays. 

I  think  the  inability  to  see  situation  on  sit- 
uation in  one's  own  life  is  really  due  to  lack  of 
memory:  we  forget  how  poignant  everything 
has  been  at  the  moment  when  w^e  look  down  the 
years  and  see  the  looming  trifles  drop  into  noth- 
ingness. Even  if  after  life  brings  nothing  very 
big  to  us,  there  have  always  been  big  events  in 
every  childhood,  events  which  at  least  to  the 
child  seemed  big ;  and  if  we  set  memory  to  work 

84 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     85 

upon  what  we  then  experienced  and  endured, 
and  transfer  those  throbbing  emotions  to  a 
grown-up  setting,  we  have  got  material  for  our 
play.  Children  feel  very  poignantly  because 
they  have  not  learnt  poise,  as  we  older  people 
know.  Their  feeling  is  out  of  proportion  to 
the  event.  But  it  is  feeling,  sincere,  intense; 
and  if  we  look  back  to  our  own  childhood  we 
can  always  there  find  material  for  the  emo- 
tional side  of  our  play  to  which  it  should  be 
easy  to  fit  a  situation.  My  own  life  has  been  a 
very  stormy  one,  with  ups  and  down«  more 
than  the  common  share;  yet,  as  I  look  back,  I 
sometimes  think  the  most  awful  moment  of  my 
life  was  when  as  a  child  I  went  to  a  new  school 
and  was  set  a  mathematical  problem  for  home- 
work. I  handed  in  my  paper  with  just  the  an- 
swer set  down.  The  mathematical  master  said 
to  me,  **You  must  show  me  all  that  you  put 
down  on  paper,  not  merely  the  answer  alone.'' 
I  replied,  ''I  have,"  at  which  he  laughed. 
*^You  surely  don't  mean  to  tell  me  you  worked 
that  in  your  head?"  he  said.  '*Yes,"  I  an- 
swered. ^^Come,  come,"  he  replied,  *' let's 
have  the  truth,"  and  for  a  moment  it  was  to 
me  as  if  my  heart  stopped  beating.  It  was  the 
first  time  in  my  life  that  anyone  doubted  my 
word. 


86     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

*^Now  to  my  mind,  an  emotion  of  that  sort 
is  as  great  as  any  emotion  can  be,  and  in  that 
little  instance  from  my  childhood  I  can  see  the 
big  situation  for  a  play  if  the  circumstances 
were  altered.  It  should  be  easy  enough  to  in- 
vent a  setting  for  an  emotion :  the  trouble  as  a 
rule  with  authors  is  that  they  cannot  get  intense 
feeling  on  paper.  Let  them  always  remember 
that  the  value  of  a  situation  is  purely  emo- 
tional, whether  for  laughter  or  tears;  that  the 
actual  event  is  nothing  in  itself,  its  virtue  for 
dramatic  purposes  lying  solely  in  the  feeling  it 
larouses.  I  have  known  so  many  young  authors 
invent  something  really  grotesque  and  say  to 
me,  ^^This  has  never  been  done  before,  it  is  an 
entirely  new  situation,''  whereas,  to  my  mind, 
it  is  not  a  situation  at  all  but  merely  a  mechan- 
ical artifice.  The  author  has  put  two  lay  fig- 
ures, A  and  B,  into  an  impossible  position  and 
he  calls  that  inventing  a  plot. 

We  English  people  pride  ourselves  so  much 
upon  our  self-control  that  we  are  apt  to  shut 
our  eyes  to  one  of  the  greatest  of  human  forces 
— deep  feeling.  We  confound  emotion  with 
emotionalism,  and  imagine  fondly  that  our  self- 
control  is  equal  to  any  strain.  We  have  a  hor- 
ror of  letting  ourselves  go,  and  for  this  reason 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     87 

we  spoil  many  a  good  play  by  being  afraid  of 
its  greatest  moments. 

There  is  a  French  phrase  familiar  to  all  who 
study  the  history  of  the  stage,  the  ^^  scene  a 
faire/^  Each  plot  has  its  ^^  scene  a  faire/^  that 
is  the  big  scene  on  which  depends  the  whole 
value  of  the  plot,  and  which  must  be  the  big 
thing  in  the  play.  Given  any  plot,  one  would 
think  it  would  be  easy  to  see  at  once  its  pos- 
sibilities. Not  a  bit.  I  have  play  after  play 
brought  to  me  with  the  germ  of  an  idea  unde- 
veloped; the  ^^ scene  a  faire'^  has  been  over- 
looked. 

Some  authors  will  justify  themselves  for  this 
by  saying  that  they  don't  want  to  be  melo- 
dramatic— the  good  old  English  shrinking  from 
emotion.  Emotion  is  not  melodramatic.  Melo- 
drama is  simply  the  unrestrained  expression  of 
nervous  excitement,  but,  strictly  speaking,  it  is 
not  emotion  at  all.  Emotion  is  deep  feeling, 
and  deep  feeling  is  only  possible  to  deep  na- 
tures. The  more  powerful  the  character,  the 
more  powerful  the  emotion  of  which  it  is  ca- 
•  pable:  deep  feeling,  in  the  true  sense  of  the 
word,  is  a  Force. 

I  have  said  that  one  can  provide  oneself  with 
a  situation  merely  by  casting  one's  memory 


88     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

back  along  the  years:  every  life  provides  ma- 
terial which,  with  certain  alterations,  will 
build-up  into  the  big  situation  of  a  play.  But 
this  situation  will  not  seem  big  unless  it  is 
rightly  handled,  and  to  understand  the  full  value 
of  a  situation  one  must  divine  the  inner  nature 
of  the  characters  who  are  to  be  concerned  in  it. 
We  come  back  again  to  what  we  have  said  be- 
fore— that  the  success  of  a  play  depends  on  its 
ensemble.  The  germ  of  the  situation  must  be 
in  the  character  drawing  which  must,  in  its 
turn,  influence  the  whole  progress  of  the  play. 
This  progress,  however,  must  be  guided  by 
the  conditions  of  stage  writing,  and  while  we 
continue  to  divide  our  plays  into  acts,  with  an 
interval  between,  it  is  dangerous  to  break  away 
from  the  old  convention  of  having  each  act  end 
on  a  dramatic  note.  If  there  is  to  be  a  break 
in  the  performance  one  must  make  that  break  at 
what  seems  a  suitable  moment,  and  for  that  mo- 
ment to  seem  suitable  it  must  leave  an  impres- 
sion of  completeness,  even  though  it  is  only 
complete  in  the  sense  that  it  has  awakened  just 
the  right  amount  of  expectant  interest.  While 
acts  finish  on  an  interval  it  is  obviously  the  first 
duty  of  the  act  to  bring  the  audience  into  the 
right  frame  of  mind  to  wait  through  the  in- 
terval with  their  interest  unabated,  so  that  the 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     89 

curtain  may  rise  again  with  their  mental  atti- 
tude as  favourable  to  the  play  as  it  was  when 
it  descended.  Otherwise  the  author  is  simply 
raising  up  for  himself  obstacles  which  he  will 
find  it  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  overcome. 
It  is  hard  enough  to  keep  the  attention  of  an 
audience  under  any  circumstances.  An  author 
can  never  atf  ord  to  relax  his  vigilance.  If  he  is 
going  to  put  them  out  of  tune  with  him  and  his 
play  he  will  have  to  start  each  act  with  a  de- 
liberate fight  to  force  them  back  to  attention, 
which  is  merely  an  inartistic  waste  of  time  and 
trouble. 

The  art  of  writing  an  act  with  due  considera- 
tion for  the  coming  interval  may  be  described 
as  that  of  accomplishing  the  seeming  paradox 
of  writing  something  the  whole  aim  of  which  is 
to  carry  interest  over  to  the  next  act,  but  yet 
shall  have  a  certain  completeness  in  itself.  So 
strongly  did  I  feel  the  need  for  this  that  in  1916 
I  was  urging  my  students  to  write  plays  in 
which  each  act  should  be  complete  in  itself,  be- 
ing an  episode  in  the  life  of  some  central  char- 
acter who  was  to  go  right  through  the  play. 
In  short,  I  wanted  plays  written  something  on 
the  lines  of  the  short  story  serial,  and  I  sug- 
gested also  episodes  in  the  life  of  some  his- 
torical personage— a  form  of  play  with  which 


90     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

the  success  of  '' Pasteur"  and  ^^ Abraham  Lin- 
coln" has  now  made  us  all  familiar.  I  have 
always  strongly  felt  the  need  for  a  certain  com- 
pleteness before  an  interval,  and  I  believe  that 
the  present  growing  impatience  at  the  break 
is  partly  due  to  the  fact  that  dramatists  have 
disregarded  this,  and,  by  finishing  their  acts 
tamely,  have  let  down  the  tension  of  their  plays 
so  much  that  they  have  failed  to  magnetise  their 
audience  into  a  desire  to  hear  more. 

The  perfect  curtain  must  contain  in  itself  a 
knack  of  awakening  an  unsatisfied  curiosity, 
such  as  that  so  ably  displayed  by  Frank  Stock- 
ton in  his  handling  of  that  admirable  imperti- 
nence '^The  Lady  or  the  Tiger,"  and,  in  order 
that  this  curiosity  shall  get  a  real  hold  of  the 
audience  and  remain  unabated  till  the  curtain 
rises  again,  the  minds  of  the  audience  must  be 
seized  by  and  brought  in  tune  with  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  play. 

Atmosphere  is  a  very  subtle  thing,  envelop- 
ing as  a  spider's  web  and  as  easily  broken. 
Every  detail  of  the  play  builds  up  its  atmos- 
phere, and  as  much  care  should  go  to  the  ad- 
justment of  these  details  as  to  the  conception  of 
the  main  idea.  One  so  often  sees  little  forget- 
fulnesses  on  the  stage  which  set  the  audience 
talking.    I  remember  a  play  with  a  beautiful, 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     91 

dreamy  theme,  the  atmosphere  in  the  love  scene 
of  which  was  harshly  rent  by  a  titter  that  went 
round  the  audience.  This  titter  was  due  to  the 
fact  that,  while  the  heroine  was  shivering  and 
complaining  of  the  cold,  the  hero  threw  up  the 
window  and  besought  her  to  look  at  the  stars. 
**Why  don't  the  blasted  fool  shut  that  blasted 
window?  The  poor  girPs  cold!''  said  a  com- 
mentator in  the  gallery,  and  though  the  rest  of 
us  had  been  too  polite  to  word  it,  the  same 
thought  was  in  our  minds :  we  exchanged  ideas ! 
Directly  an  audience  begins  to  talk  the  atmos- 
phere is  broken  and  the  whole  illusion  has  to 
be  built  up  again. 

For  this  reason  it  is  essential  that  every  de- 
tail in  a  play  should  be  made  clear  even  to  the 
comprehension  of  the  dullest.  One  never  knows 
what  accident  will  disturb  the  attention  of  some 
members  of  the  audience  at  a  critical  moment. 
People  will  come  late,  others  will  talk — even  a 
fit  of  violent  coughing  will  distract  one 's  atten- 
tion and  leave  one  momentarily  at  sea.  It  is 
more  than  risky  to  expect  an  audience  to  fijid 
out  particulars  of  the  characters  from  reading 
their  programmes.  Some  of  them  will  not  do 
this  at  all ;  others  will  have  forgotten  what  they 
have  read  by  the  time  the  play  begins.  Every 
detail  in  a  play  must  be  made  clear,  and  impor- 


92     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

tant  things  should  be  said  not  once  but  several 
times,  and  if  of  the  first  importance  it  is  even 
as  well  that  they  should  be  said  in  the  same 
form  of  words.  A  recurring  sentence  touches 
the  chord  of  memory  and  helps  very  greatly 
to  &x  a  thing  in  the  mind,  especially  in  a  case 
where  an  essential  point  is  referred  to  at  the 
beginning  of  the  play  and  mentioned  again  in 
a  later  act.  Memory  is  a  subtle  thing  and  will 
wake  to  life  at  a  trifle  if  that  trifle  is  judi- 
ciously chosen.  When  the  details  of  a  play  are 
adjusted  with  care  all  need  for  lengthy  explana- 
tions disappears :  a  thing  once  said  can  always 
be  recalled,  or  an  impression  once  made  revived 
if  the  key  is  turned  which  awakens  the  train  of 
thought.  The  choosing  of  these  keys  is  vital: 
they  really  take  the  place  of  the  ^^Leit  Motif 
in  modern  opera. 

Though  I  have  said  above  that  it  is  well  to 
repeat  an  important  piece  of  information,  and 
even  to  repeat  it  in  the  same  words,  I  want  to 
take  this  opportunity  to  warn  all  young  au- 
thors against  the  repetition  of  a  scene  or  an 
idea.  It  is  surprising  how  many  plays  have 
similar  scenes  in  different  acts.  That  is  a  fa- 
tal mistake,  as  is  the  repetition  of  any  situation 
or  bit  of  business — except,  of  course,  in  the  case 
of  a  play  which  is  depending  for  its  point  on 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     93 

such  a  repetition.  It  is  one  of  the  interesting 
things  about  writing  for  the  stage  that  any 
fault  may  become  a  virtue  if  handled  deliber- 
ately and  in  the  right  way.  This,  of  course, 
is  really  a  truism  of  any  art;  witness  Gains- 
borough's *'Blue  Boy''  in  painting;  but  what 
can  be  done  by  a  master  who  can  produce  just 
the  effect  he  desires,  and  knows  to  the  full  ex- 
actly what  he  is  doing,  cannot  be  done  by  the 
novice  with  any  impunity. 

I  cannot  lay  too  much  stress  upon  the  neces- 
sity for  the  nice  adjustment  of  detail;  a  little 
extra  thought  given  to  this  subject  is  so  amply 
repaid.  The  choice  of  scene ;  the  circumstances 
which  will  give  the  female  characters  a  chance 
of  wearing  effective  frocks;  the  inventing  of 
some  little  bit  of  business  to  help  the  entrances 
and  exits  of  the  principal  characters  so  that 
they  may  have  a  chance  of  focusing  attention 
when  they  enter,  and  of  speaking  telling  lines 
just  as  they  leave  the  stage.  These  things 
are  so  important.  An  exit  line  should  be  so 
written  that  it  can  be  spoken  at  the  door  so 
as  to  avoid  the  necessity  of  the  actor  cross- 
ing the  stage  in  silence  to  go  out.  The  archi- 
tectural lay  of  the  house  in  which  the  action  is 
taking  place ;  the  number  of  servants  likely  to 
be  employed  in  such  a  house;  the  probability  of 


94     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWEITING 

certain  conversations  taking  place  in  such  an 
environment — these  things  are  too  often  ill- 
considered.  I  have  seen  scenes  on  the  stage 
where  the  architecture  of  the  house  has  been 
impossible  unless  all  the  rooms  on  the  first  floor 
were  built  in  the  old  English  style,  overhang- 
ing the  street,  and  interviews  of  the  most  secret 
character  continually  take  place  in  halls  with 
galleries,  so  that  all  that  is  said  would  be  at 
the  mercy  of  anyone  passing. 

The  unsuitability  of  clothes  is  very  often  the 
fault  of  the  actress  and  the  management  rather 
than  that  of  the  author.  I  remember  one 
drama,  the  big  scene  in  which  was  a  trial  for 
murder.  The  life  of  the  heroine  is  saved  at 
the  last  moment  by  important  e\ddence  brought 
by  a  poor  girl  who  has  tramped  through  mud 
and  mire  for  two  whole  days  to  get  to  the  court 
in  time.  She  turned  up  in  an  immaculate  white 
frock ! 

Details  must  not  be  made  too  difficult  or  they 
will  defeat  their  ends  and  simply  set  the  audi- 
ence talking.  If  any  detail  is  so  striking  that 
it  forces  itself  on  the  attention  it  will  do  an  in- 
calculable amount  of  harm,  because  it  will  dis- 
tract the  interest  from  more  important  things. 
As  I  have  said  before,  the  stage  appeals  first 
and  foremost  to  the  eye:  what  the  eye  sees  is 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     95 

always  more  important  than  what  the  ear  hears. 
Therefore  no  dialogue,  however  essential,  will 
be  listened  to  with  concentration  if  the  eyes  of 
the  audience  are  fixed  on  some  detail  of  the 
stage  setting  which  is  exciting  them  to  com- 
ment. For  this  reason'  any  such  devices  as 
those  dear  to  the  hearts  of  stage  reformers, 
such  as  a  fender  and  fire-irons  down  by  the 
footlights  to  suggest  the  fourth  wall  of  the 
room,  or  any  curious  lighting  which  throws 
weird  shadows  over  the  faces  of  the  perform- 
ers, giving  us  a  fantastic  shadow-pattern  in 
place  of  facial  expression  should  be  most  cer- 
tainly avoided.  Even  the  inventing  of  original 
costumes  of  weird  design  may  provoke  contro- 
versy which  will  advertise  the  show  but  must 
distract  attention  from  the  play.  All  these 
things,  to  my  mind,  represent  a  misuse  of  de- 
tail; an  attempt  to  violate  Euclid  and  common- 
sense  by  inflating  the  part  to  an  importance 
greater  than  the  whole. 

I  am  no  enemy  of  beautiful  productions.  On 
the  contrary,  I  think  that  one  of  the  greatest 
charms  of  the  stage  is  that  it  allows  so  many 
arts  to  co-operate ;  but  I  would  have  the  setting, 
however  beautiful,  in  keeping  with  the  play;  I 
would  not  attempt  to  force  the  play  into  an 
arbitrary  environment.     Present  Shakespeare 


96     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

as  beautifully  as  you  please  and  keep  him  his- 
torically correct;  but  do  not  twist  and  distort 
his  simple  human  nature  into  a  self-conscious, 
freakish  pose.  The  sick  fancies  of  our  de- 
cadent times  should  not  be  allowed  to  warp  the 
healthiest  genius  who  ever  graced  our  land. 

Keep  your  detail  in  atmosphere  with  your 
whole  play;  so  used,  it  will  help  the  spell  and 
hypnotise  your  audience.    But  if  trifles  assume 
swollen  proportions,  so  that  the  play  is  to  the 
detail  a  mere  adjunct,  you  will  simply  irritate 
the  more  intelligent  of  your  audience  and  be- 
wilder the  more  honest.     Who  is  going  to  listen 
to  the  play  when  the  members  of  the  audience 
are  whispering: 
*^0h,  look  at  his  eyebrows!'' 
*^What  has  she  got  on  her  headf 
^'Wliat  is  this,  cubist  or  futurist,  my  dear?'' 
^^  Well, /think  ..." 
etc.,  etc.,  etc. 

Everything  that  excites  the  audience  to  talk 
about  the  play  during  the  intervals  makes  for 
good,  but  anything  that  excites  the  audience  to 
talk  about  the  production  during  the  play  is 
simply  disturbing. 


CHAPTER  IX 

PRACTICABILITY  AND   EXPENSE 

No  play  will  sell  unless  it  is  practicable! 
Not  long  ago  I  read  the  description  of  a  scene 
which  took  place  in  the  room  of  a  house  built  on 
top  of  a  mountain.  The  windows  at  the  back 
of  the  stage  were  described  as  giving  a  view 
of  the  path  down  this  mountain,  and  people 
coming  to  the  house  were  supposed  to  be  seen 
coming  up  this  path  before  they  entered  the 
room  through  the  windows.  Now  how  the  au- 
thor thought  this  was  to  be  managed  I  cannot 
imagine.  All  the  characters  would  have  had  to 
come  from  under  the  stage,  and  their  ascent 
could  not,  under  any  circumstances,  have  been 
visible  to  the  audience  in  front !  Evidently  the 
writer  of  this  play  had  no  real  mental  vision  of 
his  stage  picture. 

It  is  absolutely  essential  that  an  author 
should  see  his  scene  before  him,  not  as  an  ideal 
scene,  but  as  a  scene  taking  place  on  a  stage. 
The  whole  action  of  his  play  must  be  played 
before  his  eyes  by  imaginary  actors  or  he  can- 
not make  it  fit  stage  conditions.    A  novelist  has 

97 


98     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

no  sucli  trouble ;  he  can  see  beautiful  places  and 
ideal  rooms  as  they  really  are ;  but  a  dramatic 
author  must  visualise  the  action  of  his  play 
in  rooms  with  the  fourth  wall  represented  by 
the  footlights,  or  in  exteriors  pictured  by  a 
backcloth  and  wrings;  and  to  get  the  points  of 
his  play  practicable  he  should  know  something 
of  the  technique  of  acting  and  a  great  deal  about 
the  technique  of  producing  a  play.  He  must  be 
able  to  measure  the  difficulties  of  the  task  he 
is  setting  before  his  actors  and  producer,  or 
he  can  neither  invent  a  method  to  overcome 
those  difficulties  nor  write  a  play  that  will  take 
the  utmost  advantage  of  the  actors'  and  pro- 
ducer's art.  It  will  help  him  immensely  if  he 
is  clear  as  to  the  main  lines  on  which  he  wants 
his  play  produced,  and  yet  can  keep  an  open 
mind  with  regard  to  any  suggestions  the  pro- 
ducer's genius  may  make.  He  must  bear  in 
mind  always  that,  however  great  his  o^^m  talent 
for  writing  plays,  the  actors  and  producer  of 
that  play  will  have  talent  of  their  own,  and 
that  it  is  the  ensemble  of  these  talents  work- 
ing for  the  good  of  the  whole  production  which 
mil  lead  to  success  in  the  end. 

It  is  well  worth  an  author's  while  to  go  to 
the  theatre  merely  to  study  the  art  of  acting: 
if  he  watches  how  actors  make  their  entrances 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     99 

and  exits  it  will  help  him  to  write  effective  en- 
trances and  exits  in  his  play.  If  he  observes 
the  details  of  the  business  and,  above  all,  the 
significant  pauses  which  work  up  to  a  big  act- 
ing effect,  he  will  learn  how  to  give  chances  for 
the  actor's  talent  in  the  writing  of  his  lines. 
If  he  studies  facial  expression  and  the  multi- 
tudinous inflections  of  the  speaking  voice,  he 
will  learn  how  to  write  the  type  of  line  which 
is  going  to  tell  when  spoken  on  the  stage.  He 
cannot  write  for  the  stage  unless  he  knows 
something  about  acting:  if  he  tries  to  do  so  he 
will  continually  forget  that  actors  are  human 
beings  and  can  only  give  their  best  work  when 
their  temperaments  are  treated  with  considera- 
tion. 

There  is  a  certain  type  of  part,  dear  to  the 
inexperienced  dramatic  author,  which  actors 
dub  an  *  *  ungratef  uP '  part.  Whatever  the 
actor  may  do  with  a  part  of  this  type  he  is  play- 
ing the  whole  time  with  the  sympathies  of  the 
audience  against  him,  and  he  knows  that,  how- 
ever subtle  his  work,  it  will  receive  no  recogni- 
tion. A  villain  may  be  effectively  written,  and 
an  actor  may  enjoy  playing  him;  but  when  the 
villain  is  of  a  paltry  type ;  when  he  is  best  char- 
acterised by  that  expressive  word  ''cad'';  the 
actor's  only  chance  is  to  make  a  character  study 


100     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

of  him.  If  the  author  helps  him  to  do  this,  both 
will  be  satisfied.  But  too  often  an  author  leaves 
a  part  of  this  type  uncharacterised  because  he 
does  not  think  it  worth  while  to  draw  it  care- 
fully, and  the  result  is  that  the  actor  has  to 
work  with  the  consciousness  the  whole  time  that 
his  work  is  being  thrown  away.  Young  authors 
are  apt  to  ask  too  much  of  their  actors.  They 
seem  to  think  that  it  is  the  whole  duty  of  the 
actor  to  repair  their  own  mistakes !  The  only 
sure  method  of  acquiring  practicability  where 
writing  for  the  stage  is  concerned  is  to  study 
the  art  of  the  actor  with  due  respect  for  its 
great  possibilities. 

Why  create  a  vehicle  for  acting  which  gives 
no  scope  for  it?  Play  after  play  is  written 
with  the  sole  purpose  of  letting  off  verbal  fire- 
works. This  sort  of  thing  can  be  done  equally 
well  in  print.  When  writing  for  the  stage  it 
seems  to  me  an  impertinent  waste  of  a  great 
chance  to  give  the  actors  nothing  to  do:  one 
might  as  well  write  for  an  orchestra  and  neg- 
lect to  study  the  capabilities  of  the  various  in- 
struments. 

If  authors  would  manage  to  get  some  per- 
sonal experience  of  the  physical  fatigue  en- 
tailed by  acting,  I  think  their  eyes  would  be  a 
little  opened  to  the  fact  that  unless  they  con- 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRIT}NO     nt 

sider  their  actors  they  will  kill  the  chances  of 
their  own  play  by  exhausting  the  principal  mem- 
bers of  their  cast.  There  are  so  many  ways 
in  which  excessive  fatigue,  even  in  a  highly  dra- 
matic scene,  may  be  avoided.  It  is  a  grave  mis- 
take to  strike  the  top  note  continuously  from 
beginning  to  end;  one  must  have  rest  and 
pause.  A  constantly  reiterated  shriek  will 
drive  the  listener  mad;  yet  young  dramatists 
will  write  a  scene  screwed  to  the  highest  pitch 
of  emotion  from  beginning  to  end ;  a  scene  that 
could  only  be  played  by  actors  strung  up  to  the 
last  pitch  of  nervous  energy,  giving  out  their 
utmost  in  every  sentence  until  the  monotony  of 
anguish  would  become  as  exhausting  to  the  au- 
dience as  to  the  players  themselves. 

Any  monotony  is  deadly !  It  requires  a  great 
deal  of  insight  and  experience  to  write  a  big 
dramatic  scene  in  such  a  way  that,  it  shall  give 
every  chance  for  pause  and  variety.  Pass  from 
one  emotion  to  another  if  you  will,  but  with  due 
regard  to  respite.  Never  give  us  a  monotony 
of  emotion,  however  dramatic  in  itself  that  emo- 
tion may  be. 

It  is  not  always  the  longest  part  that  is  the 
most  effective,  and  it  is  never  effective  to  have 
a  principal  character  on  the  stage  doing  and 
saying  nothing  of  importance  while  others  talk. 


102     PU'ACTlCAh  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

I  have  known  young  authors  open  their  eyes 
when  I  have  told  them  that  their  principal  char- 
acter was  not  one  likely  to  appeal  to  an  actor. 
<  ^  Why  not  1 ' '  they  say.  *  *  We  have  kept  him  on 
the  stage  through  almost  the  whole  of  every 
act.''  Quite  so;  but  he  has  been  placed  in  a 
subordinate  position,  and  an  actor  w^ould  in- 
finitely rather  be  off  the  stage  than  on  it  in- 
effectively. The  length  of  a  part  does  not 
necessarily  increase  its  value. 

Even  such  obvious  points  as  a  chance  to 
change  a  dress  must  be  considered  by  the  au- 
thor. A  play  came  into  my  hands  only  the 
other  day;  quite  interesting  and  rather  novel 
in  idea,  but  it  depended  for  its  effect  upon  the 
fact  that  the  flash  of  a  change  of  lines  showed 
the  principal  characters  to  us  without  an  in-- 
stant's  delay  in  entirely  fresh  costumes  and 
make-up.  Any  ^^quick-change,''  as  we  call  it, 
on  the  stage  has  to  be  carefully  timed  at  re- 
hearsals, and  often  extra  lines  written  in  to 
lengthen  the  little  scene  during  which  the  ac- 
tress is  changing  **off."  Details  of  this  sort 
must  be  practicable  or  the  play  cannot  be  done. 

Of  course  the  question  of  expense  is  a  very 
vital  one.  We  reckon  roughly  on  £5000  for  a 
West-end  production,  which  does  not  mean  that 
the  production  will  cost  £5000,  but  that  £5000 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     103 

would  be  necessary  to  meet  the  production  ex- 
penses and  leave  enough  in  hand  to  keep  the 
play  going  until  a  sufficient  time  has  passed  for 
gossip  and  advertisement  to  bring  regular  au- 
diences to  the  theatre  and  ensure  a  run.  I  am 
speaking  now,  of  course,  of  an  average  comedy. 
A  costume  play  or  a  musical  comedy  would 
probably  cost  more.  Yet  it  is  obvious  that 
managers  cannot  be  expected  to  risk  £5000  time 
after  time  on  plays  that  do  not  seem  to  them 
to  have  much  chance  of  commercial  success. 

They  will  measure  this  chance  of  success  nat- 
urally in  figures,  as  any  business  man  would 
do.  They  will  think,  first  of  all,  of  the  seating 
capacity  of  their  theatre.  When  playing  **to 
capacity'^  the  utmost  they  can  take  per  week  is 
such  and  such  a  sum,  and  it  is  very  unlikely 
that  any  play  will  play  to  capacity  every  night : 
Saturday  nights,  of  course,  not  other  nights. 
There  is,  therefore,  a  certain  reduction  to  be 
made  from  this  sum  in  estimating  the  week's 
probable  takings.  They  cannot  hope  to  make 
money  on  their  venture  unless  the  running 
weekly  expenses  of  the  play,  plus  the  initial 
expenses  of  production,  can  be  kept  down  to  a 
sum  which  will  leave  them  a  good  margin  of 
profit  on  their  weekly  turnover. 

Yet  the  inexperienced  author  will  express 


104     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

surprise  that  the  manager  of  a  theatre  of  small 
seating  capacity  will  not  produce  an  expensive 
play.  It  is  obvious  to  anyone  who  knows  some- 
thing of  theatrical  figures  that  it  is  impossible 
for  a  manager  of  a  small  theatre  to  accept  an 
expensive  play,  for  even  if  he  played  to  ca- 
pacity every  night  the  expenses  of  the  play  be- 
ing so  high  he  could  not  make  a  sufficient  sum 
to  bring  him  any  satisfactory  return  for  the 
capital  he  risks  over  the  production.  No  man- 
ager can  hope  to  make  a  success  of  every  play 
he  produces :  he  has  always  got  to  leave  a  mar- 
gin in  his  calculations  for  possible  loss.  He  is 
lucky — very,  very  lucky — if  one  play  in  every 
four  makes  a  real  hit.  The  profits  from  that 
one  play  have  got  to  pay  the  loss  on  the  other 
three  to  make  it  worth  his  while  to  continue 
in  management.  Never  blame  a  manager  for 
looking  at  the  commercial  side  of  a  play:  he 
must  do  so  or  go  out  like  a  snuffed  candle. 

The  calculation  of  expense  is  a  matter  that 
varies  a  little  from  time  to  time.  Some  years 
ago  managers  were  eagerly  accepting  plays  in 
which  each  act  was  played  in  the  same  scene,  as 
this  saved  a  very  considerable  expense  for 
scenery;  but  they  found  by  experience  that 
audiences  did  not  like  one  scene  throughout  a 
play.     I  remember,  myself,  hearing  two  girls 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     105 

in  the  stalls,  on  looking  at  their  programme, 
exclaim,  ^^Oh!  it^s  the  same  scene  throughout! 
Oh!  how  dull!  There  will  be  nothing  to  look 
at/'  Lately,  in  spite  of  the  excessive  expense 
of  scenery  in  these  days,  there  has  been  a  tend- 
ency among  managers  to  prefer  a  change  of 
scene.  If  more  than  one  scene  is  required  in 
each  act  (and  modern  plays  are  showing  more 
and  more  a  tendency  to  free  themselves  from  all 
the  old  conventions)  it  is  absolutely  necessary 
that  these  scenes  should  be  of  a  kind  which  can 
be  changed  by  the  stage  carpenters  without  de- 
lay. Nothing  is  more  trying  to  an  audience 
than  to  have  to  sit  still  while  the  scenery  is  be- 
ing shifted. 

A  ^^full  set,^'  as  we  call  it  (one  which  occu- 
pies and  requires  the  whole  depth  of  the  stage) 
can  be  set  before  the  act  commences  behind 
other  shallower  scenes,  the  backcloths  for  one 
or  more  of  which  can  be  set  in  front  of  the  full 
set  so  that  a  change  of  scene  can  easily  be 
worked  with  a  very  little  shifting  of  the  front 
wings  and  accessories.  The  author  should  al- 
ternate what  we  call  a  front  scene  (a  shallow 
scene  set  in  front  of  a  full  set)  with  the  more 
elaborate  scenes  set  the  full  depth  of  the  stage, 
and,  for  this  reason,  front  scenes  are  often 
called  ^^carpenters'  '*  scenes  because  they  are 


106     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

set  in  front  of  a  full  set  for  the  convenience  of 
the  carpenters,  who  can  then  get  through  their 
work  of  scene-shifting  without  delaying  the 
play.  You  cannot  have  two  full  sets  following 
one  another  without  a  considerable  interval  of 
time  between  them  for  the  carpenters  to 
*^ strike"  and  reset.  A  stage  carpenter  is  a 
very  important  person :  he  can  make  or  mar  a 
play.  His  work  is  too  little  recognised  by  the 
theatre-loving  public:  they  do  not  realise  that 
the  smooth  progress  of  a  play  depends  very 
much  upon  his  untiring  care.  It  is  he  wiio  sees 
that  every  door  on  the  stage  opens  easily — and 
what  a  big  thing  this  apparently  unimportant 
trifle  is !  It  is  he,  as  a  rule,  who  helps  the  illu- 
sion by  the  skilful  preparation  of  the  ^^ props.'' 
It  is  he  who  sees  that  not  a  second  is  wasted  on 
the  mechanism  of  the  stage,  and  that  the  actors 
have  nothing  to  worry  about  except  the  playing 
of  their  own  parts.  Oh!  the  head  carpenter's 
little  oil-can,  his  f  ootrule  and  screw  driver,  and, 
above  all,  his  steady,  practical  headpiece! 
Without  the  help  of  the  stage  carpenter  the 
greatest  play  ever  written  might  become  to  an 
audience  a  mere  laughing-stock! 

What  I  have  said  of  scenes  applies  equally 
to  the  dressing  of  a  play.  Keep  your  expenses 
within  bounds,  but  give  the  audience  a  chance 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAY^RITING     107 

of  seeing  something  that  will  please  their  eye. 
A  play  that  gives  no  opportunity  at  all  for 
pretty  frocks  will  have  a  hard  fight  to  public 
favour.  Not  even  in  so  small  a  detail  as  this 
dare  we  forget  the  axiom  that,  where  the  stage 
is  concerned,  the  first  appeal  is  to  the  eye ! 

Keep  your  expenses  down  by  keeping  your 
cast  down;  but  remember  that  the  expense  of 
a  cast  does  not  depend  only  on  the  number  of 
characters  but  on  the  type  of  actors  that  will  be 
needed  to  fill  the  parts.  A  play  with  a  cast  of 
eleven  may  be  cheaper  to  produce  than  a  play 
with  a  cast  of  seven,  if  four  out  of  those  seven 
are  parts  that  require  actors  commanding  star 
salaries. 

In  thinking  of  your  cast,  think  of  practicabil- 
ity in  every  way.  If  you  must  have  one  or  two 
small  speaking  parts,  or,  as  we  call  them,  *4ine'' 
parts,  try  to  write  them  in  such  a  way  that  they 
could  in  an  emergency  be  cut  out,  as  they  can 
then  be  filled  by  the  understudy  and  omitted  if 
the  understudy  were  called  upon  to  take  the 
place  of  the  principal.  Another  good  rule  is  to 
have  one  effective  character  part  which  is  not 
too  long  and  which  is  never  on  the  stage  at  the 
falling  of  the  curtain :  this  can  then  be  played 
by  the  stage  manager.  Remember  that  there 
will  be  a  stage  manager  and  an  assistant  stage 


108     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

manager,  both  commanding  fair  salaries,  and 
that  it  lessens  the  expense  of  a  production  if 
these  men  can  also  be  employed  as  actors.  Both 
must  not,  however,  be  on  the  stage  at  any  cur- 
tain, because  if  they  are  there  will  be  no  one 
to  direct  the  lowering  of  the  *  ^  blind. ' '  All  these 
points  are  very  important  when  it  comes  to 
touring,  as  it  is  always  both  troublesome  and 
expensive  to  tour  a  number  of  people. 

There  is  an  old  saying  to  the  effect  that  one 
should  never  introduce  fresh  characters  in  the 
last  act  of  a  play.  The  reason  for  this  is  not 
only  that  it  is  supposed  to  be  difficult  to  work 
up  the  interest  of  an  audience  in  a  fresh  charac- 
ter so  near  the  end ;  it  is  also  an  expense  reason. 
If  the  part  is  of  any  importance  it  will  have  to 
be  played  by  an  experienced  actor,  since  it  is  a 
vital  mistake  to  run  any  risk  of  letting  down  the 
end  of  one 's  play  and  sending  the  audience  away 
with  a  sense  of  anti-climax.  However  short  the 
scene  in  which  this  new  character  appears,  it 
must  be  played  in  a  way  to  ensure  a  success — 
which  means  it  must  be  played  by  an  actor  who 
will  command  a  certain  salary.  A  manager  is, 
therefore,  likely  to  feel  it  a  pity  that  he  is  asked 
to  pay  a  good  salary  for  a  part  of  which  so  little 
use  is  made. 

The  position  in  which  any  scene  stands  in  re- 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     109 

lation  to  the  act  in  which  it  appears  will  make 
a  considerable  difference  to  the  necessity  of 
having  that  scene  well  played,  and  on  this 
necessity  depends  the  scale  of  salary  that  will 
have  to  be  paid  to  the  actor  playing  the  scene. 
When  writing  a  play  it  is  well  for  an  author 
to  have  some  notion  of  salaries,  and  to  be  able 
to  assess  in  his  mind  the  running  expenses  of 
his  play  should  it  get  on.  The  more  practical 
knowledge  of  this  sort  he  possesses  the  more 
will  he  be  able  to  see  the  manager's  point  of 
view,  and  the  more  likely  will  he  be  to  write  a 
play  which  will  please  managers  and  be  ac- 
cepted. 


CHAPTER  X 

HOW  TO  SELL  A  PLAY  WHEN  FINISHED,  WITH  HINTS 
ON   TEKMS  AND   AGKEEMENTS 

It  is  useless  to  send  a  play  to  a  manager  who 
does  not  want  one.  It  is  useless  to  send  the 
wrong  type  of  play  to  a  manager.  It  is  useless 
to  send  a  manager  a  play  which  is  too  like  one 
he  has  already  produced. 

Some  of  my  readers  may  think  it  is  useless 
for  me  to  make  the  three  previous  remarks. 
My  experience  is  that  no  sooner  does  a  man- 
agement produce  a  successful  play  than  the 
posts  come  laden  with  new  plays  which  bear  an 
astonishing  similarity  to  the  running  success. 
Now,  I  am  not  accusing  anyone  of  plagiarism. 
Ideas  are  in  the  air,  and  the  number  of  plays 
that  get  written  round  a  similar  idea  is  aston- 
ishing. Many  of  the  plays  that  reach  a  man- 
ager after  a  success  have  been  written  before 
that  success ;  but  why  authors  should  think  that 
because  a  manager  has  produced  one  play  which 
has  proved  a  winner  he  is  going  to  spend  his 
life  producing  others  which  are  like  milk  and 
water  imitations  of  that  play  I  do  not  know: 

110 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     111 

he  will  be  much  more  likely  to  want  a  play  on 
a  theme  which  would  seem  to  the  patrons  of  his 
theatre  an  entire  novelty. 

Equally  numerous  are  the  plays  of  a  wrong 
type  sent  up  to  a  management  for  its  considera- 
tion. No  tongue,  however  silvery,  will  persuade 
an  actor-manager  to  put  on  a  play  in  which  he 
appears  at  a  disadvantage — why  should  he? 
He  is  going  to  stake  on  the  production  not  only 
a  great  deal  of  money,  but  something  much 
more  important  than  money — his  time,  trouble, 
and  professional  reputation.  Why  ask  him  to 
cut  his  own  throat,  and  accuse  him  of  being  no 
artist  when  he  declines! 

Nowadays,  when  so  many  theatres  are  con- 
trolled by  syndicates,  managements  are  no 
longer  tied  to  a  certain  type  of  star  part,  and 
authors  are  allowed  a  wider  choice  in  the  writ- 
ing of  their  plays.  Nevertheless,  it  is  useless 
to  send  up  a  heavy  drama  to  the  management 
of  a  very  small  theatre;  worse  than  useless  to 
send  up  a  light  comedy  to  the  management  of 
a  big  spectacular  house.  A  play  that  depends 
entirely  on  the  naturalness  of  its  dialogue  will 
stand  no  chance  of  success  in  a  theatre  which  is 
so  large  that  the  actors  on  the  stage  have  to 
think  of  effect  in  all  they  say  and  do  if  they 
wish  their  acting  to  get  over  the  footlights. 


112     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

Such  plays  are  only  fit  for  a  small  house  or,  as 
we  call  it,  an  '' intimate'*  theatre. 

It  is  equally  useless  to  put  a  play  which  de- 
pends for  its  effect  upon  the  management  of 
crowds,  on  to  a  stage  so  small  that  a  group  of 
seven  would  need  careful  staging  to  prevent 
their  getting  in  each  other's  way.  To  do  this 
is  to  take  the  leap  from  the  sublime  to  the 
ridiculous. 

Some  theatres  acquire  a  reputation  for  a  cer- 
tain type  of  play,  and  the  author  who  tries  to 
change  this  reputation  by  putting  on  at  that 
theatre  a  play  of  an  entirely  different  kind  to 
that  which  its  patrons  are  expecting  may,  in  the 
end,  make  a  success,  but  he  has  got  to  start 
with  the  odds  against  him.  Therefore,  before 
sending  a  play  up  to  a  management,  considera- 
tion should  be  given  to  the  type  of  play  that 
management  is  in  the  habit  of  producing  and 
the  kind  of  theatre  under  its  control. 

Above  all,  it  is  well  to  find  out  whether  the 
manager  really  wants  a  play  before  sending  one 
in,  because  if  he  does  not,  he  will  merely  glance 
at  it  and  return  it,  and,  should  you  send  it  again 
later  at  a  more  propitious  moment  his  half 
recollection  of  having  seen  it  before  will  stand 
seriously  in  its  way.  It  is  very  dull  to  have  to 
reread  a  play,  and  managers,  besides,  have  a 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     113 

natural  prejudice  against  one  that  they  suspect 
of  having  gone  the  rounds  unaccepted.  The 
first  question  a  manager  asks  about  a  play  is, 
^*  Where  has  it  been  sentf  and  if  he  hears  that 
it  has  already  been  refused  more  than  once  he 
will  hesitate  about  reading  it. 

For  this  reason  it  is  always  as  well  to  be  sure 
that  your  manuscript  which,  as  I  have  said  be- 
fore, should  be  professionally  typed,  has  fresh, 
cl^an  covers.  Covers  get  torn  and  soiled  when 
a  play  has  been  sent  through  the  post  several 
times,  and  little  trouble  and  expense  is  involved 
in  taking  these  off  and  putting  on  fresh  ones 
before  again  sending  out  the  manuscript.  If 
it  looks  attractive,  the  manager  is  the  more 
likely  to  read  it,  and  if  he  does,  you  need  have 
no  further  fear  of  prejudice.  He  will  judge  it 
on  its  merits. 

The  class  of  people  writing  plays  divide 
themselves  very  sharply  into  two  categories — 
the  author  who  with  a  little  advice  and  expe- 
rience may  very  well  become  ** worth  while,'' 
and  the  author  who  never  is  and  never  can  be 
^^ worth  while."  My  opinion  is  that  everyone 
can  learn  to  write  marketable  stuff  and  make 
money  by  writing  except  those  people  who  can- 
not learn  to  write  at  all.  One  can  pick  these 
out  in  a  moment,  and  it  is  kinder  to  tell  them 


114     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

the  truth ;  but  no  matter  how  hopeless  the  first 
attempts  of  the  others  may  be  they  will  achieve 
success  in  time  if  they  are  only  willing  to  im- 
prove. 

A  showy  first  manuscript  is  not  always  a 
sign  of  ultimate  success.  Many  a  timid  be- 
ginner has  won  in  the  end  through  sheer  perse- 
verance. The  faculty  of  observation  can  be 
cultivated,  and  it  is  practically  the  only  faculty 
that  counts.  My  test  of  an  author  is  always 
the  capacity  for  improvement.  I  have  no  use 
for  the  type  who  comes  to  me  with  a  first  at- 
tempt and  declares  that  he  will  not  have  one 
word  of  it  altered.  The  art  of  alteration  is  an 
art  in  itself  and  demands  very  great  qualities — 
insight,  open  mind,  and  adaptability.  It  is  per- 
haps the  greatest  factor  in  our  power  of  self- 
development. 

This  brings  me  to  a  point  of  view  which  I 
hold  very  seriously — namely,  that  success  in  this 
world  depends  very  largely  on  personal  char- 
acter. Of  course,  the  word  ^* success^'  itself 
needs  defining :  I  am  using  it  here  entirely  in 
the  sense  of  a  success  of  which  one  may  justly 
feel  proud ;  and  I  am  firmly  convinced  that  suc- 
cess of  this  kind  depends  quite  as  much  upon 
personality  as  upon  initial  talent. 

We  are  not  aU  equally  gifted:  we  may  not 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     115 

all  develop  the  same  degree  of  wit  and  brain, 
but  we  can  all  develop  ourselves,  and,  to  my 
mind,  the  author  who  wishes  to  succeed  must 
first  of  all  take  himself  in  hand  and  learn  to 
see  with  a  sympathetic  eye  and  wait  with  a 
sympathetic  understanding.  If  he  is  bright  and 
charming;  interested  in  others  rather  than  him- 
self; all  these  qualities  will  make  for  good  in 
his  work,  which  will  give  out  his  own  personal 
magnetism. 

Such  attributes  as  these  will  not  only  help 
him  to  write  his  play  but  will  help  him  to  sell 
it,  since  they  will  attract  towards  him  the  in- 
terest of  people  in  a  position  to  aid  him,  and, 
above  all,  the  interest  of  the  manager  himself. 
I  shall  never  forget  how  a  certain  well-known 
manager  said  to  me  as  he  gave  me  a  play  to 
read:  ^*If  it's  good,  Agnes,  of  course,  I  must 
consider  it;  but  don't  ask  me  to  read  it  unless 
it's  a  sure  money-maker,  as  the  author  is  such 
a  nuisance!"  Certain  authors  waste  such  a  lot 
of  one's  time  that  they  make  it  impossible  for 
one  to  proceed  with  one's  work.  One  knows 
that  to  put  on  a  play  by  a  man  with  that  tem- 
perament is  simply  to  court  a  serious  nervous 
breakdown. 

Whatever  you  do,  don't  make  yourself  a 
nuisance.     Too  many  people  believe  that  you 


116     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

can  only  get  your  own  way  in  this  world  by 
worrying  others,  and  that  the  more  you  badger 
a  manager  about  your  plays  the  more  likely 
you  are  to  get  him  to  read  those  plays.  Bear 
in  mind  always  the  fact  that  although  you  may 
successfully  badger  the  weak  you  can  never 
successfully  badger  the  strong,  and  that  unless 
a  manager  is  a  man  of  strong  personality  he 
is  not  likely  to  be  a  successful  manager,  and, 
therefore,  not  likely  to  be  of  any  use  to  you. 

Of  course,  all  we  people  who  have  to  do  with 
the  stage  are  extremely  courteous:  we  have  at 
least  the  outw^ard  habit  of  the  well-bred,  and 
it  is,  therefore,  sometimes  very  hard  for  the 
outsider  to  divine  our  real  thoughts.  But  lik- 
ing goes  with  liking  all  the  world  over,  and 
those  who  consider  us  will,  in  the  end,  receive 
substantial  consideration  from  us.  If  we  like 
an  author  personally  we  are  more  inclined  to 
like  his  work,  and  I  am  strongly  of  opinion 
that  the  most  practical  advice  I  can  give  any 
author  is  to  be  liked.  Get  personally  known  if 
you  can :  where  the  stage  is  concerned  our  pleas- 
ant social  intercourse  means  a  great  deal  to  us. 
Become  one  of  us  and  you  will  learn  the  tech- 
nique of  your  work  with  the  more  rapidity,  and 
consequently  that  work  will  become  more  val- 
uable.   You  will  exchange  ideas  with  the  prac- 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     117 

tical  actor  and  understand  a  little  better  why 
so  many  of  us  shiver  when  we  hear  the  good  old 
phrase,  **Art  for  Art's  sake/*  It  is  not,  as  the 
outside  public  are  quick  to  imagine,  because  we 
misesteem  art;  on  the  contrary,  we  generally 
hold  her  too  sacred  to  want  to  talk  about  her: 
she  is  our  religion,  and  the  more  earnest  among 
us  show  a  certain  shrinking  from  dragging 
into  words  our  inner  thoughts.  We  take  her 
for  granted. 

But  when  the  outsider  talks  about  **art  for 
art's  sake''  he,  through  a  lack  of  knowledge  of 
the  practical  side  of  the  stage,  is  only  too  apt 
to  refer  to  a  state  of  things  which  means  starva- 
tion for  the  working  actor.  Put  on  a  beautiful 
play  which  has  no  money  in  it  by  all  means,  but 
don 't  expect  the  men  and  women  who  have  their 
living  to  make,  and  often  families  to  keep,  to 
spend  their  whole  time  playing  without  a  living 
wage.  I  so  often  hear  the  uninitiated  rave  over 
the  good  work  done  by  the  promoters  of  artistic 
schemes.  Before  I  give  my  personal  tribute  to 
any  such  scheme  I  want  to  see  the  salary  list. 
One  can  only  run  plays  that  don't  pay  if  one 
chooses  casts  composed  of  the  moneyed  ama- 
teur! 

Get  to  know  something  of  the  actor's  world 
and  you  will  not  only  improve  the  technique  of 


118     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

your  writing,  but  you  will  also  learn  how  to 
write  a  play  which  will  sell. 

If  a  manager  considers  your  play  seriously 
he  will  probably  apply  to  you  to  make  certain 
alterations.  Everyone  judges  a  play  from  its 
own  point  of  view,  and  you  are  likely  to  have 
very  different  suggestions  made  by  different 
people — in  fact,  so  diverse  that  they  may  often 
seem  to  contradict  one  another.  The  manager 
knows  the  type  of  play  he  wants  to  produce, 
and  he  will  bring  your  play  into  line  with  this 
type  as  far  as  he  can  before  finally  deciding 
to  produce  it.  He  will  then  offer  you  a  con- 
tract. 

Many  authors  go  to  an  agent  for  advice  about 
contracts,  and  it  is  certainly  as  well  that  one 
should  know  something  about  the  matter  before 
accepting  blindly  any  terms  that  are  offered. 
There  are  managers  and  managers,  and  al- 
though one  is  perfectly  safe  when  dealing  with 
the  cream  of  the  profession  one  does  not  always 
succeed  in  selling  one's  first  play  to  the  right 
person.  An  inexperienced  author  cannot  ex- 
pect such  good  terms  as  an  author  of  reputa- 
tion, because  his  name  is  not  an  advertisement 
and  will  not,  in  itself,  bring  money  into  the 
house.  Then  his  play  will  probably  need  a 
greater  expenditure  of  time  and  trouble  on  the 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     119 

part  of  the  producer  before  its  good  points  can 
be  presented  at  their  full  value.  An  expe- 
rienced author  has  learned  how  to  make  his 
points:  in  inexperienced  work  the  possibilities 
may  be  there,  but  the  actual  shaping  may  need 
a  considerable  amount  of  adjustment. 

The  average  theatrical  contract  gives  a  man- 
ager a  licence  to  perform  a  play  either  for  a 
definite  term  of  years  or  for  an  indefinite  pe- 
riod, provided  that  the  manager  gives  not  less 
than  a  certain  number  of  performances  per 
year.  The  author  takes  a  percentage  on  the 
gross  weekly  receipts,  and  this  percentage  is 
in  the  form  of  a  sliding  scale.  For  instance, 
say  it  starts  at  5  per  cent  on  the  first  six  hun- 
dred, becoming  7%  P^r  cent  on  the  gross  re- 
ceipts exceeding  six  hundred  and  are  not  more 
than  eight  hundred;  10  per  cent  on  all  exceed- 
ing eight  hundred  but  not  exceeding  one  thou- 
sand, and  so  on ;  these  would  be  very  good  terms 
for  a  West-End  production.  The  terms  for  the 
provinces  are  usually  different,  and  American, 
colonial,  and  foreign  rights  should  all  have  sep- 
arate consideration.  Film  and  amateur  rights 
should  be  excluded.  An  option  is  usually  paid 
on  account  of  royalties  and  a  time  limit  set  on 
this  option.  If  the  manager  does  not  produce 
the  play  within  that  time  limit  the  author  re- 


120     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

tains  the  money  paid  for  the  option  and  the 
rights  of  the  play  revert  to  him  unless  a  further 
option  is  taken  up.  Managers,  as  a  rule,  want 
the  American  rights  with  the  British  rights,  but 
they  should  be  asked  to  pay  a  separate  option 
for  them.  Usually  the  touring  rights,  though 
the  percentage  may  be  different,  are  included  in 
the  option  paid  for  the  West-End  production: 
suburban  theatres  count  as  provinces. 

There  should  always  be  a  clause  in  every 
agreement  to  the  effect  that  no  alteration  may 
be  made  without  the  author  ^s  consent.  I  al- 
ways wish  one  could  add  to  this  clause  the 
words  we  often  find  in  a  lease,  *'Such  consent 
not  to  be  unreasonably  withheld!^'  The  au- 
thor should  certainly  give  his  consent  to  every 
practical  alteration,  since  it  is  obvious  that  the 
producer  should  know  his  business  and  is  not 
very  likely  to  take  the  trouble  to  think  out 
alterations  to  a  play  unless  he  thinks  it  for 
the  good  of  the  production. 

Far  more  plays  are  bought  than  are  ever 
produced.  I  have  known  a  play  make  quite  a 
number  of  hundreds  from  option  money  and 
finally  go  into  the  waste-paper  basket !  I  have 
known  other  plays  which  have  been  bought  and 
bought  and  bought  again  for  ten  or  twelve  years 
and  yet,  in  the  end,  have  had  a  most  successful 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     121 

production.  Plays  written  round  a  purely  top- 
ical subject  are  of  no  use  unless  produced  at 
the  moment,  and  if  written  by  inexperienced 
authors  have  a  somewhat  small  chance  of  sale. 
Plays  written  with  a  too  temperamental  leading 
part  are  only  saleable  for  the  actor  or  actress 
that  part  happens  to  suit. 

A  few  years  ago  it  was  difficult  to  sell  a  play 
that  had  not  a  big  star  part;  nowadays  this 
difficulty  is  getting  less,  and  with  the  coming 
in  of  trade  union  rules  for  actors  will  prob- 
ably decrease  still  more,  and  plays  with  an  all- 
round  cast,  easier  to  write  and  usually  dearer 
to  the  heart  of  the  author,  will  come  into  their 
own. 

At  the  same  time  it  must  never  be  forgotten 
that  the  length  of  a  theatrical  performance  is 
limited,  and  in  the  brief  two  hours  allotted  to  a 
play  it  is  difficult  to  keep  your  audience  inter- 
ested in  many  people.  When  a  play  is  built 
round  a  central  figure,  two  hours  is  sufficient  to 
allow  the  audience  to  get  thoroughly  familiar 
with  his  personality,  and  to  feel  at  the  end  of 
the  time  that  they  have  taken  him  to  their 
hearts.  If  they  feel  this  they  will  come  again 
and  again  to  see  him,  and  the  author's  per- 
centages will  consequently  rise  in  value.  There 
are  exceptions  to  every  rule,  but  I  should  be 


122     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

inclined  to  say  myself  that,  thougli  a  play  with 
an  all-round  cast  may  satisfy  the  artistic  sus- 
ceptibilities of  the  few,  the  play  Avith  the  really 
lovable  central  figure  is  the  play  that  is  going 
to  fascinate  us  all. 


CHAPTER  XI 

CASTING  AND   PRODUCTION 

It  is  well  for  an  author,  when  he  has  written 
a  play,  to  make  some  notes  upon  what  he  would 
consider  an  ideal  cast  for  it.  As  adviser,  I 
am  often  asked  by  managers  to  suggest  the  ideal 
cast  for  a  play.  Of  course,  we  know  that  it  is 
usually  impossible  to  get  the  ideal  cast,  because 
only  a  very  great  stroke  of  luck  would  leave 
all  the  actors  most  desired  free  to  accept  an 
engagement  just  at  the  time  when  the  play  was 
to  be  produced;  but  if  one  has  in  one's  mind's 
eye  the  actors  who  would  be  ideal  for  the  va- 
rious parts  it  greatly  simplifies  the  choosing  of 
substitutes.  We  know,  at  any  rate,  the  types 
to  look  for. 

The  casting  of  a  play  is  all-important,  and 
the  author  should  be  very  careful  in  making 
any  suggestions  on  this  matter,  because,  unless 
he  is  experienced,  his  suggestions  might  do 
more  harm  than  good.  In  choosing  a  cast,  as 
in  everything  else,  ensemble  is  vital.  I  shall 
never  forget  my  own  feelings  when  I  was  asked 
to  take  up  the  work  of  completing  the  cast  of 

123 


124     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

a  play  which  someone  else  had  begun.  It  was  a 
drama,  intense  and  grim,  each  line  being  as 
the  voice  of  doom.  My  predecessor  had  en- 
gaged an  actor  of  6  ft.  4  in.  to  play  with  an 
actress  barely  5  ft.  Luckily  actors  themselves 
are  so  intelligently  alive  to  the  danger  of  ap- 
pearing at  a  disadvantage  that  I  had  no  trouble 
in  inducing  both  of  them  to  see  how  impossible 
it  was  for  them  to  appear  together  in  such  a 
play. 

Actors,  as  a  rule,  are  extremely  intelligent 
about  their  work,  and  are  very  quick  to  see  any 
point  that  is  fairly  put  before  them.  If  an  au- 
thor wants  his  cast  to  get  the  best  result  out 
of  his  play  it  behoves  him  to  use  his  instinct 
for  character  to  guide  him  in  his  treatment  of 
each  member  of  his  cast.  If  he  will  only  re- 
member that  actors  are  human  beings  with  their 
good  and  their  bad  side ;  that  it  is  as  important 
to  them  for  his  play  to  be  a  success  as  it  is  to 
himself;  that  their  reputations  are  quite  as 
much  at  stake  as  is  the  author's;  and  that  they 
are  not  only  willing,  but  anxious,  to  co-operate 
with  him  in  every  way  for  the  good  of  the  show ! 
If,  in  short,  he  will  handle  them  with  tact  and 
sympathy,  he  will  find  them  devoted  to  the 
cause.  In  this,  as  in  everything  else,  person- 
ality tells ;  and  if  the  personality  of  the  author 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     125 

is  sympathetic  towards  his  cast  he  will  find 
his  cast  zealous  to  a  degree. 

I  come  of  an  old  theatrical  family,  and  all 
my  life  I  have  lived  in  stage  circles,  yet  I  shall 
never  overcome  my  feeling  of  amazement  at 
the  patience,  good-humonr,  and  goodwill  of  the 
working  actor.  Beasts  of  burden:  they  have 
been  this  too  long;  expected  to  give  every  mo- 
ment of  their  lives  for  an  uncertain  wage. 
Trade  union  rules  are  righting  this  great  wrong 
at  last.  It  is  high  time.  But,  even  if  the  eco- 
nomic conditions  of  the  actor  ^s  life  are  likely 
now  to  be  on  a  bettef  footing,  his  profession 
still  remains,  and  must  ever  remain,  an  arduous 
one.  His  work  is,  of  its  nature,  work  that 
plays  havoc  with  the  nerves.  So  is  the  work 
of  a  dramatic  author. 

If  each  would  respect  the  other's  anxieties  all 
would  be  well;  but  trouble  arises  too  often  be- 
cause a  young  author,  to  whom  his  first  night 
is  a  unique  even,  forgetting  that  a  first  night  is 
equally  important  to  his  cast,  is  inclined  to  vent 
his  own  nervous  irritability  upon  them.  The 
age-long  feud  between  authors  and  actors  is 
simply  due  to  the  fact  that  the  author's  nerv- 
ous anxiety  too  often  renders  him  unjust  to  the 
actor,  who,  being  all  nerves  himself,  is  some- 
times only  too  ready  to  take  offence. 


126     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

I  am  not  saying  for  one  moment  that  an  actor 
is  always  the  best  jndge  of  what  is  the  best 
for  the  play;  but  I  do  say  that  he  knows  the 
technique  of  his  own  art,  and  that  the  technique 
of  the  author's  art  must  take  account  of  this. 
I  do  not  say  that  an  author  should  place  his 
interests  blindly  in  the  hands  of  the  producer, 
but  I  do  say  that  he  should  take  the  point  of 
view  that  the  producer  is  trying  to  do  his  best 
for  the  whole  production,  and  thus  it  is  obvi- 
ously to  the  advantage  of  the  production  that 
it  shall  be  guided  by  one  clear  point  of  view. 
Let  the  author  discuss  this  point  of  view  with 
the  producer  before  rehearsals  start  as  much 
as  he  pleases,  but  once  rehearsals  have  started 
let  him  leave  it  to  the  producer  to  get  his  re- 
sult in  his  own  way,  standing  by  to  help  sym- 
pathetically not  aggressively. 

Let  the  author  remember  always  that  nothing 
is  more  baffling  to  a  company  than  to  receive 
instructions  at  war  mth  one  another.  He  must 
never,  on  any  account,  go  behind  the  producer's 
back  by  telling  the  company  that  he  wants  such 
and  such  effects  other  than  those  the  producer 
has  set  down.  If  he  has  any  suggestion  to 
make,  let  him  make  it  to  the  producer  quietly 
and  leave  it  to  the  producer  to  put  it  before 
the  company.     Let  him  do  and  say  nothing  to 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     127 

lessen  the  producer's  authority:  in  every  way 
let  him  be  as  loyal  to  the  producer  as  he  expects 
the  producer  to  be  to  him.  In  the  same  way, 
if  he  wishes  the  cast  to  put  intelligent  work  into 
his  play  let  him  respect  their  intelligence.  I 
have  known  an  author  speak  contemptuously 
of  an  actor  who  had  seen  the  character  he  was 
to  play  from  a  different  point  of  view  to  that 
which  the  author  intended.  The  author  re- 
garded the  actor  as  a  fool  for  making  the  mis- 
take. It  never  seemed  to  occur  to  him  that, 
for  such  a  misreading  to  be  possible,  there 
might  have  been  some  lack  of  clearness  in  his 
own  writing. 

Where  the  stage  is  concerned,  listen  to  every- 
body !  As  Hermann  Vezin  used  to  say,  *  ^  Stric- 
ture, even  from  fools,  sometimes  does  good," 
and  since  it  is  the  task  of  the  dramatic  author 
to  write  so  that  he  shall  be  understood  of  the 
many,  the  opinion  of  the  many  must  be  impor- 
tant to  him.  Take  the  point  of  view  that  if 
anyone  misunderstands  your  meaning  the  fault 
lies  in  the  way  that  you  have  expressed  your 
meaning ;  thus  you  will  have  always  with  you  a 
spur  to  improvement. 

Inexperienced  authors  are  often  annoyed  be- 
cause the  wording  of  their  lines  is  changed  at 
rehearsal.    I  have  in  a  previous  chapter  pointed 


128    PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

out  that  this  may  be  rendered  necessary  by 
some  acoustic  consideration ;  but  very  often  an 
idea  for  some  witty  or  telling  line  will  occur  to 
the  producer  or  to  someone  else  at  rehearsal. 
In  this  case  the  author  gets  the  benefit  of  the 
good  line.  So  many  interests  are  at  stake  over 
every  production  that  the  good  of  the  produc- 
tion must  be  the  one  determining  factor,  and 
even  the  author's  modesty,  however  praise- 
worthy in  itself,  must  yield  to  this  prior  claim. 
But  lines  come  to  be  changed  in  another  way 
which  is  more  worrying  to  the  author.  A  turn 
of  words,  which  seems  quite  natural  to  him, 
will  stick  in  some  actor's  throat  and  he  will 
object  to  it.  In  these  circumstances,  even  if  the 
objection  seems  foolish,  it  is  often  well  for  the 
author  to  give  way,  because  if  an  actor  is  asked 
to  speak  a  sentence  which  does  not  seem  to  him 
natural  he  will  stiffen  up  over  it  and  it  will  not 
seem  natural  as  he  says  it.  As  I  have  said  be- 
fore, we  all  have  our  characteristic  turns  of 
speech,  and  to  some  of  us  the  use  of  words 
which  are  a  little  archaic  is  a  matter  of  daily 
custom,  whereas  to  others  it  is  bewildering. 
Where  acting  is  concerned  a  certain  allowance 
must  always  be  made  for  the  human  equation: 
it  is  courting  disaster  to  insist  on  an  actor  do- 
ing what  he  does  not  ^ '  feel. ' ' 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     129 

The  temperament  of  the  actor  playing  the 
part  at  the  original  production  will  sometimes 
cast  a  special  light  upon  a  character  which  will 
take  the  colour  of  his  personality;  that  is  one 
reason  why  the  casting  of  a  play  is  of  such  vital 
moment.  Of  course,  one  always  hopes  to  get 
the  right  people  for  the  parts;  but  if  one  is 
forced  to  accept  a  substitute  who  is  not  quite 
in  tune  with  the  author's  original  intention  it 
is  sometimes  better  for  the  author  to  reshape 
his  intention  to  suit  his  interpreter  than  to  run 
the  serious  risk  of  having  the  part  played  by  a 
man  who  is  out  of  harmony  with  it,  and  who  is, 
therefore,  unable  to  get  the  best  out  of  it. 

An  actor,  to  play  a  part  well,  must,  to  use 
our  expressive  phrase,  *^get  into  the  skin''  of 
that  part.  He  must  think  with  the  thoughts  of 
the  man  he  is  portraying,  move  and  look  as  that 
man  moved  and  looked.  He  must  become  that 
man,  and  he  cannot  do  this  unless  he  instinc- 
tively is  that  man  for  the  time  being.  If  an 
actor  cannot  ^*see"  his  part;  if  it  does  not 
seem  to  him  consistent,  and  if  its  phraseology 
does  not  appear  to  him  the  right  phraseology 
— ^in  short,  if  he  is  not  convinced  himself,  he 
can  never  make  of  that  part  a  portrait  that 
will  convince  others.  If,  then,  an  author  finds 
that  an  actor  cannot  see  a  part  as  he  sees  it,  and 


130     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

he  is  bound  to  have  that  actor  in  the  cast,  he, 
as  the  more  adaptable  of  the  two,  the  man  with 
the  broader  view,  will  do  well  to  fit  his  part  to 
the  actor,  so  that  at  any  rate  the  result  may  be 
homogeneous  and  played  by  the  actor  with  con- 
viction. The  author's  meaning  reaches  the  au- 
dience through  the  actors  as  interpreters,  and 
will  never  reach  them  rightly  unless  the  inter- 
preters rightly  understand.  My  advice,  there- 
fore, to  all  inexperienced  dramatists  is,  **Use 
every  means  of  tact  and  persuasion  to  get  your 
interpreters  to  understand  what  you  have  writ- 
ten, but  if  you  find  that  this  is  absolutely  impos- 
sible, then  give  them  something  that  they  can 
understand." 

The  reason  for  my  insistence  on  this  point 
is  that  young  dramatists  very  often  have  to  put 
up  with  somewhat  of  a  scratch  performance  of 
their  plays.  A  bad  performance  is  very  much 
worse  than  none  at  all,  since  if  the  play  fails  it 
is  done  with  for  good  and  all.  Therefore  I 
want  to  lay  stress  upon  the  fact  that  it  is  well 
for  them  to  take  every  means  they  can  to  get 
as  good  a  result  as  possible,  lest  in  straining 
at  a  gnat  they  find  that  they  have  to  swallow  a 
camel !  The  producer  knows  his  cast :  he  knows 
the  material  on  which  he  will  have  to  depend 
to  get  his  results,  and  he  is  usually  the  best 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     131 

judge  in  any  disputed  point  of  how  far  it  is 
wise  for  the  author  to  give  way.  If  you  de- 
sire an  harmonious  production,  do  your  best  to 
set  an  example  of  loyalty  to  the  producer,  who 
has  the  responsibility  of  the  show  upon  his 
shoulders. 

There  is  yet  another  determining  factor  in 
the  ultimate  shaping  of  a  play,  and  that  is  the 
audience.  Their  verdict  is  final.  No  matter 
how  clever  a  line  may  seem  to  the  author,  or 
even  to  the  cast,  if  it  fails  to  *^go''  with  the 
audience  it  is  better  cut  out.  First  nights  often 
bring  many  surprises!  The  point  the  success 
of  which  we  felt  most  sure  is  the  point  which 
proves  to  have  no  value,  and  the  obvious  easy 
effect  at  which  we  were  rather  inclined  to  turn 
up  our  noses  is  the  effect  that  scores.  No  mat- 
ter how  carefully  a  play  has  been  prepared,  it 
will  nearly  always  be  subject  to  slight  altera- 
tions determined  by  the  verdict  of  the  first  night 
audience. 

A  play  will  sometimes  undergo  variations  on 
its  progress  through  the  provinces,  though 
these  variations  are  usually  more  due  to  the 
instinct  of  the  actors  than  to  any  actual  work 
on  the  part  of  the  author.  Some  towns  furnish 
audiences  with  most  delicate,  critical  susce.li*^ 
bilities;  at  others  they  can  see  nothing  unles? 


132     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

it  is  thrown  at  them.  If  a  play  is  to  tour  suc- 
cessfully in  all  parts  of  the  kingdom  certain 
changes  in  its  interpretation  are  sure  to  creep 
in,  and  at  these  it  is  useless  for  an  author  to 
cavil. 

Although  I  have  laid  considerable  stress  on 
the  fact  that  an  author  must  trust  the  expe- 
rienced judgment  of  those  into  whose  hands  the 
task  of  rehearsing  his  play  shall  fall,  yet  I  would 
be  the  last  to  suggest  that  authors  should  be 
incapable  of  defending  themselves  from  the 
shortsighted  suggestions  of  certain  managers 
who,  from  a  cheese-paring  economy  or  an  innate 
inability  to  appreciate  anything  but  the  coarsest 
type  of  stage  effect,  would  spoil  the  whole  in- 
tention of  a  play  by  seeing  it  only  from  a  sordid 
point  of  view.  Authors  cannot  study  the  stage 
too  carefully.  They  should  go  continually  to 
the  theatre,  not  only  in  the  West-End  but  in 
the  provinces  and  suburbs,  and  keep  a  list  of 
all  actors  who  seem  to  be  promising,  so  that 
they  may  be  ready  with  suggestions  for  cast- 
ing their  plays  either  for  London  or  tour  when- 
ever needed.  A  manager  is  glad  to  have  an 
author's  suggestions  if  those  suggestions  are 
intelligent  and  helpful:  it  saves  him  time  and 
trouble,  and  anything  that  makes  for  the  good 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     133 

of  the  production  makes  for  the  good  of  his 
pocket. 

The  antagonism  that  sometimes  seems  to 
exist  between  authors  and  managers  is  due  to 
the  fact  that  some  authors,  merely  through  in- 
experience, start  by  being  unreasonable — ^that 
is,  impracticable — in  their  demands,  and  that 
the  manager,  being  a  busy  man,  does  not  give 
the  time  to  go  into  the  whys  and  wherefores  of 
the  matter,  but  somewhat  arbitrarily  goes  his 
own  way  without  explanation.  If  authors 
would  only  learn  something  about  the  matter 
beforehand  this  sort  of  trouble  would  not  arise. 
A  manager  is  a  man  who  makes  his  living  by 
producing  plays;  he  has  usually  a  very  keen 
eye  for  all  that  affects  his  own  interests,  and, 
obviously,  would  not  hold  the  position  he  does 
unless  he  had  the  knack  of  successful  manage- 
ment. One  of  the  secrets  of  success  in  this  line 
is  to  be  always  ready  to  welcome  a  good  idea, 
and  managers  who  know  the  monetary  value 
of  a  good  idea  do  welcome  it  with  open  arms. 
If  then  the  author  knows  enough  of  the  prac- 
tical side  of  production  to  be  ready  with  good 
ideas,  he  will  find  the  manager  not  only  willing 
to  listen  to  him  but  eager  for  his  suggestions. 
It  is  the  author  who  thinks  he  knows  and  doesn't 


134     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

who  is  such  a  hete  noire  to  both  manager  and 
actor. 

Don't  grumble  that  managers  show  a  want 
of  consideration  for  authors  when  producing 
their  plays.  Master  the  subject  not  only  of 
writing,  but  of  casting  and  production;  learn 
to  estimate  results  as  a  producer  estimates 
them  and  you  will  be  able  to  speak  with  the 
voice  of  authority,  while  your  work  will  gain 
enormously  in  value.  The  man  of  knowledge 
is  the  man  we  want. 


CHAPTER    XII 

STAGE   TEEMS 

In  writing  this  book  I  have  purposely  used 
as  many  of  our  stage  phrases  as  I  could,  for 
they  are  so  expressive.  The  very  nature  of 
their  work  teaches  actors  the  value  of  words, 
and  the  slang  of  the  stage  has  a  beauty  of  its 
own  which  no  one  with  any  sense  of  language 
can  fail  to  appreciate.  It  is  one  of  the  pecul- 
iarities of  the  stage  that  no  one  can  pretend  an 
intimate  acquaintance  with  its  ways  with  im- 
punity— ** Their  speech  bewrayeth  them!^'  A 
friend  of  mine  once  told  me  that  she  had  been 
asked  to  put  money  into  a  theatrical  venture 
run  by  a  woman  who  stated  that  she  had  had 
some  seven  years'  experience  with  various  well- 
known  managements.  I  undertook  to  see  this 
woman  for  my  friend,  and  asked  her  what  she 
had  done.  She  replied  that  she  had  acted  in 
most  of  the  famous  plays  of  that  period.  I 
said,  ^^Are  you  a  quick  study f  ^*0h!  yes," 
was  the  answer,  *^I  have  no  trouble  at  all  in 
learning  my  words."  Now  stage  folk  never 
speak   of   ** acting"   a   part,   we   always    say 

135 


136     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

*' played ''  instead,  and  although  nowadays  the 
newcomer  does  refer  to  his  '^ words,"  in  those 
times  we  all  kept  to  the  old  stage  custom  of 
referring  to  our  *4ines."  1  was  able,  there- 
fore, without  the  slightest  hesitation  to  tell  my 
friend  that  this  woman  was  an  impostor,  and 
a  little  further  inquiry  proved  that  I  was  right. 
This  habit  of  never  saying  we  have  ^* acted" 
a  part  but  always  that  we  have  ^ Splayed"  it 
seems  to  me  to  make  vivid  the  fact  that  the 
really  great  actor  does  play  with  his  part;  he 
is  so  easy  in  it  that  it  seems  all  spontaneous 
and  natural ;  but  the  poor  actor  acts  every  min- 
ute of  his  time.  One  of  our  terms  of  greatest 
contempt  is  to  say  of  an  actor,  ^^Oh!  he  is  al- 
ways acting,"  and  I  think  one  of  our  most 
charming  customs  is  that  of  associating  our- 
selves with  our  parts.  When  telling  a  story 
of  any  play  in  which  we  have  appeared  we  al- 
ways speak  of  the  characters  in  that  play  not 
by  their  names  but  by  the  names  of  the  men  and 
women  who  have  played  with  us,  and  our  own 
part  invariably  becomes  ^'me."  I  remember 
once  when  I  was  with  Hermann  Vezin  at  a 
crowded  assembly,  he  was  telling  me  the  story 
of  some  great  drama  in  which  he  had  made  one 
of  his  big  successes.  There  was  a  sudden  lull 
in  the  noise  of  conversation  round  us,  and  in 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     137 

the  silence  his  great  voice  tranquilly  announced, 
*  *  And  then  I  murdered  my  wife ! "  To  identify 
oneself  with  one^s  work  is  surely  the  big  thing. 

There  are  many  people,  unfortunately,  for 
whom  the  stage  has  an  ugly  fascination:  they 
want  to  be  thought  of  the  stage,  not  because 
they  admire  it,  but  because  they  think  it  has  the 
attraction  of  something  a  little  ^*on  the  edge." 
These  people  pick  up  certain  slang  phrases  and 
interlard  their  conversation  with  them,  but  they 
nearly  always  trip  up  over  some  little  form  of 
words,  not  distinctive  enough  to  put  in  a  glos- 
sary, and  yet  significant  at  once  of  real  fa- 
miliarity with  our  folk.  Such  a  phrase  as 
**Why  don't  you  write  inT'  or  '^Have  you  got 
a  shopT' 

There  are  certain  phrases,  much  in  use  at 
rehearsals,  which  can  hardly  be  included  in  a 
glossary.  For  instance,  a  producer  will  say, 
** Don't  be  so  precious,"  meaning  don't  speak 
your  words  with  too  much  regard  for  each  one. 
**We  don't  want  acting  in  farcical  comedy," 
another  producer  will  cry,  meaning  that  if  you 
pause  to  elaborate  every  effect  you  will  lose  the 
one  thing  vital — pace. 

No  detail  must  he  dwelt  upon  to  an  extent 
that  will  distract  attention  from  the  main  theme. 
This  axiom  is  just  as  important  in  producing 


138     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

as  it  is  in  writing  plays.    Art  is  all  a  matter  of 
selection,    and    an    artistic    result    is    never 
achieved  without  the  sacrifice  of  some  little  per- 
sonal vanity.     The  author  will  have  to  eliminate 
many  a  line  good  in  itself — perhaps  even  a  part 
that  he  has  drawn  with  care — because  he  will 
find  that  line  and  part  stand  out  too  clearly  and 
so  rivet  attention  at  the  wrong  moment,  focus- 
ing it  upon  some  subordinate  matter  and  throw- 
ing out  the  balance  of  the  whole.    In  the  same 
way  an  actor  will  have  to  give  up  some  effective 
bit  of  business  or  submit  to  having  good  lines 
cut  out  of  his  part  because,  when  the  whole 
play  is  in  rehearsal,  that  part  is  seen  to  be 
thrown  into  a  prominence  that  is  going  to  take 
sympathy    from    the    central    figures.    I    am 
afraid  I  must  regretfully  admit  that,  in  some 
cases,  the  taking  of  good  lines  from  one  part 
and  giving  them  to  another  is  due  to  an  inferior 
motive.    Vanitas  vanitatum!    We  are  all  hu- 
man, but  this  is  not  by  any  means  so  often  the 
case  as  the  public  suppose.    An  inexperienced 
author  will  often  give  a  very  good  line  to  a 
very  small  part,  and  the  actor  engaged  for  that 
part,  himself  inexperienced,  cannot  speak  the 
line  to  bring  out  its  value.    It  is,  therefore, 
better  for  the  line  to  be  transferred,  if  possible, 
to  an  actor  who  can  speak  it.    In  spite  of  those 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     139 

exceptions  which  prove  all  rules,  the  good  of 
the  show  is  the  one  thought  that  rules  in  stage- 
land. 

I  am  often  amused  at  the  opinion  that  pre- 
vails about  us  even  now  though  the  old  ban  is 
removed  and  the  old  ostracism  has  given  place 
to  the  more  dangerous  extreme  of  ^4ion-hunt- 
ing."  It  has  taken  us  all  we  know  to  fight  up 
against  the  enervating  effect  of  the  petting  and 
spoiling  we  receive  in  certain  quarters,  yet 
even  now  our  friends,  when  speaking  of  us, 
will  say,  *^'0h!  he  is  an  awfully  nice  chap. 
Not  a  bit  like  an  actor.''  And  they  call  us  by 
our  Christian  names,  whether  they  know  us  or 
not.  Now  when  we  call  one  another  by  our 
Christian  names  we  do  it  from  a  sense  of  com- 
radeship ;  because  the  old  ostracism  has  bound 
us  together,  and,  however  we  may  squabble  be- 
tween ourselves,  we  are  all  one  folh. 

It  is  an  odd  world  this  stage  world  of  ours ; 
a  fascinating,  twopenny-halfpenny  world;  so 
like  this  book  of  mine,  half  rhetoric,  half  slang; 
but  at  the  back  of  it  all,  unspoken,  taken  for 
granted,  there  is  a  simple  code  of  honour — 
''The  public  first,  and  self —nowhere !' ' 


GLOSSARY 

Scenario.  May  be  called  the  skeleton  of  a  play. 
It  is  a  rough  draft  of  the  various  scenes  and  how  they 
follow  one  another;  the  entrances  and  exits  of  the 
characters  and  the  progress  of  the  action;  all  told  as 
brieflj^  as  possible. 

Scene.  This  word  is  used  in  two  senses.  It  either 
refers  (a)  to  the  setting  in  which  the  play  is  supposed 
to  be  happening,  or  (h)  it  refers  to  the  dialogue  be- 
tween two  or  more  characters  who  are  on  the  stage. 
It  begins  at  the  moment  when  these  particular  char- 
acters are  left  by  themselves,  and  it  ceases  directly 
any  other  character  joins  them.  Each  of  these  points 
is  the  beginning  of  a  fresh  scene. 

Scene  Plot.  This  phrase  indicates  the  diagram  of 
the  scene,  giving  the  exits  and  entrances,  the  position 
of  the  door,  fire-place,  window,  arrangement  of  furni- 
ture, or  other  particulars. 

Cues.  This  word  is  used  to  indicate  the  last  few 
words  of  the  line  of  dialogue  which  precedes  either 
the  entrance  of  a  character,  a  speech  of  another  char- 
acter, or  some  action  taking  place  upon  the  stage,  or 
some  effect  worked  by  the  property  man,  or  limelight 
man,  or  electrician,  off  the  stage. 

Bite  your  Cues.     This  means  the  starting  of  your 

own  speech  sharply  on  the  finish  of  the  preceding 

speech. 

141 


142     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

Stage  Directions.  In  writing  stage  directions  the 
first  letter  only  of  certain  words  is  employed  to  in- 
dicate these  words.  For  instance,  R.  L.  C.  are  con- 
tractions of  ''Right,"  ''Left,"  "Centre,"  and  refer 
to  the  right,  left,  or  centre  of  the  stage.  As  a  rule  in 
England  these  are  taken  to  mean  the  right  or  left  of 
the  actor  upon  the  stage  as  he  faces  the  audience. 
Abroad,  exactly  the  opposite  is  the  rule,  and  right  or 
left  indicates  the  right  or  left  as  seen  from  the  audi- 
torium. Of  late  years  we  have  had  plays  written 
from  either  of  these  points  of  view,  and  it  is  always 
advisable  to  indicate  at  the  commencement  of  the  play 
which  method  is  being  employed. 

We  meet  these  three  letters  in  conjunction  with 
other  letters  which  modify  them.  Thus  R.  U.  E. 
means  right  upper  entrance,  or  R.  I.  E.  right  first 
entrance.  P.,  prompt,  that  is  the  side  on  which  the 
prompter  stands.  0.  P.,  opposite  prompt,  the  op- 
posite side  of  the  stage.  Up  Stage  means  up  to  the 
back  of  the  stage,  as  far  as  possible  from  the  foot- 
lights ;  Down  Stage  means  down  to  the  footlights.  In 
the  old  days  when  the  stage  was  set  with  wings  they 
were  numbered  1st,  2nd,  and  3rd.  Hence  the  direc- 
tion R.  I.  E.  means  the  entrance  down  right,  by  the 
footlights,  or,  in  the  old  stage  parlance,  down  by  the 
first  wing.  In  the  same  way  up  C.  or  down  C.  means 
up  towards  the  centre  of  the  backcloth  or  down  to- 
wards the  centre  of  the  footlights. 

Backcloth.  Refers,  of  course,  to  the  scenery  at 
the  back  of  the  stage.     In  a  room  scene  the  back  wall 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     143 

of  the  room  would  be  set  a  little  lower  on  the  stage, 
while  up  back  is  usually  a  cloth  giving  a  view  from 
the  window  or  of  a  room  beyond  the  doors  up  C. 
when  they  are  opened.  This  cloth  is  called  **  back- 
ing." 

Box  Scene.  Is  a  room  complete  with  a  back  and 
two  sides  joining  on  to  one  another.  Wings  now- 
adays are  very  little  used  except  for  open-air  scenes, 
woods,  and  so  on. 

Set.    a  set  is  a  fairly  elaborate  scene. 

Front  Cloth.  A  front  cloth  is  a  scene  painted  on 
a  cloth  hung  well  down  stage,  usually  in  front  of  a 
more  elaborate  setting  which  the  stage  carpenters  are 
busy  preparing  during  the  progress  of  the  scene  that 
is  being  played  in  the  front  cloth.  For  this  reason 
such  scenes  are  known  as  *' carpenters'  scenes"  be- 
cause they  have  been  introduced  into  plays  to  enable 
carpenters  to  continue  their  work  at  the  back  of  the 
stage  during  the  playing  of  the  front  scene  without 
putting  the  audience  through  the  tedium  of  having  to 
wait  unentertained  while  the  set  is  prepared.  Such 
scenes  are  frequently  used  in  melodramas,  or  in 
dramas  of  a  picturesque  description,  but  are  seldom 
employed  in  comedy,  where  one  scene  per  act  is  the 
usual  desideratum. 

Cast.  The  word  *'cast"  is  simply  a  nominal  use  of 
the  verb.  All  those  who  are  cast  for  the  parts  are 
termed  the  ' '  Cast. "  It  is  often  incorrectly  spelt  with 
a  final ''e." 

Star.     The  word  *'Star"  is  used  of  an  actor  of 


144     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

celebrity.  The  Star  Part  is  the  part  written  for  such 
an  actor. 

Lead.  The  leading  part  in  any  play  is  referred  to 
as  the  ''lead.''  The  lead  may  be  either  a  male  or  a 
female  character,  but  one  has  to  be  careful  not  to  use 
the  word  ''lead"  except  of  the  one  part,  whichever  it 
may  be,  which  is  really  the  principal  part  in  the  play. 
If,  for  instance,  the  man's  part  in  the  play  is  dis- 
tinctly bigger  than  the  principal  woman's  part,  the 
play  is  said  to  have  a  male  lead,  and  the  woman's  part 
is  simply  known  as  that  of  the  leading  lady.  It  is  a 
breach  of  etiquette  to  refer  to  a  part  which  is  merely 
that  of  a  leading  lady  as  that  of  the  "lead." 

Heavy  Lead.  The  Heavy  Lead  is  distinct  from  the 
Juvenile  Lead  in  that  it  represents  an  older,  more 
serious,  and  dramatic  type  of  part. 

Juvenile  Lead.  Juvenile  Lead  is  a  term  never 
used  if  the  juvenile  part  is  really  the  great  part  in 
the  play;  but  when  the  leading  part  in  the  play  is 
that  of  an  older  man  or  woman,  then  the  best  young 
part  is  known  as  the  Juvenile  Lead. 

Old  Man  or  Old  Woman.  These  terms  are  ap- 
plied indifferently  to  any  part  representing  a  man  or 
woman  of  fifty  years  or  upwards.  Should,  however, 
the  part  be  a  leading  part,  the  phrase  character  part 
is  more  usually  employed. 

A  Low  Comedy  part  is  one  of  very  broad  farcical 
effects. 

A  Light  Comedy  part  is  one  which  implies  liveli- 
ness verging  often  into  what  we  call  a  "patter"  part 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     145 

— a  part  with  a  great  deal  to  say,  which  must  be 
spoken  quickly  and  trippingly.  Pace  is  essential  in 
these  parts. 

An  Eccentric  Comedian  is  one  who  blends  charac- 
ter of  a  whimsical  type  with  his  light  comedy. 

The  Chambermaid  is  practically  equivalent  to  a 
French  grisette.  The  phrase  Singing  Chambermaid 
has  now  practically  dropped  out.  It  implies  a  light 
comedy  part  of  a  piquante  type  with  a  song  or  songs. 

Business,  written  Bus.,  is  the  word  used  to  indicate 
any  particular  bit  of  action,  such  as  the  humorous  ef- 
fect that  a  comedian  will  get  out  of  punching  sofa 
pillows,  playing  with  the  various  objects  on  a  table, 
twisting  his  fingers  in  a  funny  way  and  so  on.  It 
may  also  refer  to  action  of  a  far  more  important  type 
which  directly  concerns  the  progress  of  the  play,  such 
as  the  secreting  of  a  letter  in  a  certain  ornament  or 
piece  of  furniture  by  one  of  the  characters  and  the 
subsequent  upturning  of  all  the  furniture  in  the  room 
in  search  of  it,  which  formed  the  climax  of  Act  I  of 
** Lucky  Jim." 

A  Gag  and  a  "Wheeze  are  rather  difficult  to  dif- 
ferentiate, as  they  are  somewhat  loosely  used;  but  it 
seems  more  usual  to  call  any  set  phrase  employed  by 
a  comedian  continually  during  a  play  a  ''wheeze"  and 
to  keep  the  word  ''gag"  for  those  lines,  often  very 
witty,  which  are  spontaneously  introduced  by  certain 
comedians  when  on  the  stage,  and  which  often  vary 
from  night  to  night.  For  instance,  the  well-known 
conjuror  Bertram  had  a  habit  of  saying  "Isn't  it 


146     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

wonderful?''  after  all  his  tricks.  This  was  a 
''Wheeze."  Those  two  comedians,  both  so  great  in 
their  way,  and  both,  unfortunately,  lost  to  us — Dan 
Leno  and  James  Welch — had  a  knack  of  introducing 
extremely  witty  lines  on  the  spur  of  the  moment. 
These  lines  were  ' '  Gags. ' ' 

Dress  the  Stage.  To  Dress  the  Stage  is  to  place 
the  actors  who  are  not  absolutely  the  principals  in 
the  scene  in  such  a  position  on  the  stage  that  the 
whole  appearance  of  the  scene  shall  be  effective. 

Take  the  Stage.  To  Take  the  Stage  is  to  cross 
down  front.  This  type  of  business  is  used  in  emo- 
tional scenes. 

To  Cover  is  to  get  in  front  of  another  actor — a  very 
bad  fault  on  the  stage. 

To  Fluff  is  to  forget  one 's  lines. 

To  Dry  Up  is  to  forget  one's  lines  and  stop  com- 
pletely. 

Plot.  This  is  a  word  used  by  actors  during  re- 
hearsal to  indicate  those  lines  in  the  dialogue  which 
tell  facts  essential  to  the  plot.  It  is  an  old  stage  rule 
that  while  lines  of  this  sort  are  being  spoken  the 
actors  should  remain  as  still  as  possible,  as  movement 
at  such  a  moment  might  distract  the  attention  of  the 
audience  from  the  words. 

Length.  This  word  has  almost  gone  out  of  use. 
It  was  continually  employed  in  the  old  days  of  the 
poetic  drama.  Parts  were  said  to  consist  of  so  many 
lengths,  each  length  being  forty-two  lines. 

Close.    We  sometimes  say  of  dialogue  that  it  is  not 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING     147 

close  enough,  or  that  a  certain  portion  of  it  requires 
writing  more  closely.  By  this  we  mean  that  too  many 
words  have  been  used.  Verbose  dialogue  is,  to  us,  like 
a  sieve  from  which  the  sense  runs  out. 

To  Get  Over  means  to  get  over  the  footlights.  We 
say  of  a  point  in  a  play  that  it  does  or  it  does  not 
*'get  over,"  meaning  that  it  proves  effective  or  the 
reverse  with  an  audience.  Many  a  good  bit  of  acting, 
delicate  and  subtle,  will  be  appreciated  by  the  cast  at 
rehearsal,  but  will  prove  at  the  actual  performance 
of  the  play  to  have  '*no  value"  because  it  is  not  suf- 
ficiently effective  to  carry  to  a  distance. 

A  Curtain  is  the  end  of  an  act  just  before  the  fall- 
ing of  the  curtain. 

The  Blind  is  the  curtain  itself. 

The  Entrance  is  not  only  the  coming  on  to  the 
stage  of  any  character,  but  the  way  he  comes  on ;  the 
few  lines  of  preparation  which  lead  up  to  it,  and  the 
whole  situation,  so  to  speak,  which  builds-up  for  the 
entrance  of  the  character :  above  all,  how  he  comes  on 
and  what  he  comes  on  to  do. 

The  Exit  Line  is  the  line  which  all  skilled  dram- 
atists are  careful  to  write  for  an  actor  to  speak  effec- 
tively just  at  the  exit  before  leaving  the  stage. 

Gallery  Lines  are  not,  as  most  people  think,  now- 
adays, lines  which  only  appeal  to  the  less  cultured  of 
an  audience.  They  are  lines  which,  by  their  nature, 
can  be  spoken  with  emphasis  and  which  will  carry  to 
a  distance. 

Props.    A  contraction  of  properties,  and  refers  to 


148     PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  PLAYWRITING 

all  the  little  articles  required  for  the  action  of  a  play 
— writing-paper,  letters,  teacups,  salver,  card,  bag, 
etc.,  varying,  of  course,  with  each  production.  Props, 
is  also  used  to  indicate  the  man  whose  business  it  is  to 
look  after  these  things  and  see  that  they  are  ready  at 
each  performance. 

Box  Office  Plays.  We  say  that  the  final  judge  of 
a  play  is  always  the  Box  Office,  by  which,  of  course, 
we  mean  the  number  of  tickets  sold.  A  Box  Office 
play  is  a  play  that  maJses  money. 


THE  END 


RET^^N 


CIRCULATION  DEPARTMENT 

202  Main  Library 


LOAN  PERIOD  1 


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